Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19: Exploring the New Normal 3031327624, 9783031327629

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Okechukwu E. Amah Marvel Ogah

Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19 Exploring the New Normal

Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19

Okechukwu E. Amah • Marvel Ogah

Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19 Exploring the New Normal

Okechukwu E. Amah Pan-Atlantic University Lagos Business School Lekki, Nigeria

Marvel Ogah Pan-Atlantic University Lagos Business School Lekki, Nigeria

ISBN 978-3-031-32762-9    ISBN 978-3-031-32763-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To God Almighty who gave us the inspiration, wisdom, and strength to write the book. We also dedicate to our wives and children who gave us their maximum support while we were busy writing the book.

Preface

COVID-19 caused significant disruption in how work is done. For example, a study performed by one of the authors of this book established that 90% of the people surveyed started working remotely for the first time during COVID. Such a shift pointed to the possibility that how leadership is enacted must differ. This aligns with historical records that a shift in the work system has always produced a shift in how leadership is enacted to achieve efficiency and effectiveness. One lesson that can be drawn from the history of work is that leadership will be different in the future from what it is today. However, predicting the future form of leadership is challenging because of the number of unknowns associated with such exercise. Despite this, it is possible to review history and draw up lessons that can help in understanding leadership in the future. This is because evidence shows that the change in the nature of work has always given rise to the crafting of new leadership that can be effective in the new system of work organisation. For example, how leadership was enacted under the domestic work system differed from that under the factory system. The conclusion drawn from history is that all existing leadership theories had arisen from a significant disruption in work structure (Cawthon 1996; Dziak 2019; Johns and Moser 1989). Hence, COVID-19 provides such disruption and an opportunity to reconceptualise leadership, bearing in mind the changes observed during COVID-19. In doing this, it is vii

viii Preface

necessary to understand what happened in the past era before COVID-19, during COVID-19, the future of work, and what stakeholders expect to occur in the next normal after COVID-19. Past writers had alluded to the possibility that the old form of leadership before COVID-19 may not be effective in the next normal (Amah in press; Beer et al. 2016; Gurdjian 2014; Lencioni 2020; Mackay 2021). The book’s various chapters looked at leadership from different eras with different forms of the structure of work. The purpose was to draw lessons in such a review to construct a probable future leadership path. The book is unique in that in constructing the future, it obtained perspectives from practitioners, academics, and employees on what they thought the future of leadership should be. In this way, the book presents balanced information on the future of leadership post-COVID-19. Okechukwu Ethelbert Amah & Marvel Ogah-Lagos, Nigeria Lekki, Nigeria Lekki, Nigeria 

Okechukwu E. Amah Marvel Ogah

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 Part I Evolution of Leadership Thoughts   9 2 Leadership  in the Pre-industrial and Early Industrial Revolution 11 3 Human  Relations Era: Behavioural Theories of Leadership 29 Part II Leadership Enactment and Challenges in the COVID-19  49 4 Evolution  of Operations Management Vis-à-Vis Operational Leadership: Effectiveness Versus Efficiency 51 5 Operational Leadership: Amidst Global Disruption 65 6 COVID-19: Leadership Effectiveness and Challenges 85 ix

x Contents

Part III Leadership in the Next Normal Post COVID-19 I 105 7 Qualitative  Study on the Future of Leadership as Seen by Leaders, Practitioners, and Employees107 8 Leadership  and Sustainability Development Goals: Triple Bottom-Line Measure of Organisational Effectiveness125 9 Leadership  and Sustainability Development Goals: The Role of Ethics and Equity in Leadership in the Next Normal147 Part IV Leadership in the Next Normal Post-­COVID-­19 II 169 10 Post-COVID  Operational Excellence: Behavioural Operations Management171 11 Incorporating  the Understanding and Leadership Mindset in Leadership Development193 12 C  onclusion and Epilogue211 I ndex219

Acronyms

BO CEO CIPD COVID-19 CSE DEI DNA HRM IACP ILO IoT LMX OL PWC QWC SDGs S&OP SWOT TBL UN VBL

Behavioural Operations Chief Executive Officer Chartered Institute of Personnel Development Coronavirus Disease Core Self-Evaluation Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Deoxyribonucleic Acid Human Resources Management International Association of Chiefs of Police International Labour Organisation Internet of Things Leader-Member Exchange Operations Leadership Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand Quality Work Circles Sustainability Development Goals Sales & Operations Planning Strength, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats Triple Bottom Line United Nations Value-Based Leadership

xi

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 12.1

Evolutionary transitions of leadership theories. Source: Author but inferred from the works of Blake and Mouton (1978), McCall and Lombardo (1977), Hersey and Blanchard (1969), and Simmons (2011) 41 Strategies for handling decline in revenue. (Source: Adopted from Ferry (2020, p. 18)) 91 Proposed post-COVID-19 leadership behaviours. (Source: Author)118 Graph of coding from the study. (Source: Author) 119 Quick test on ethical decision-making. (Source: Adapted from Kezar and Holcombe [2017, p. 17]) 155 Model of the ethical orientation of leaders. (Source: Author) 158 A link depicting the connection between operational excellence and other components of an organisation. (Source: Adopted from Anderson et al. 2005) 176 Leadership development model (top of the iceberg). (Source: Author)194 Leadership development model including above and below iceberg factors. (Source: Author) 197 Categories of leadership mindset. (Source: Author) 202 Model of leadership effectiveness. (Source: Author) 216

xiii

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2

Evolution of management thoughts 14 Differential effects on workers in the factory and domestic systems20 Table 2.3 Leadership value system and associated behaviours 23 Table 3.1 Evolution of organisation and management theories 37 Table 3.2 Difference between the classical theory and the Human Relations Theory 38 Table 6.1 Leadership skills and strategies in crisis 96 Table 7.1 Culture connectedness in pre- and post-COVID-19 113 Table 8.1 Paradigm shift due to the introduction of TBL reporting 132 Table 9.1 Various types of shared leadership in the organisation 151 Table 11.1 Consequences of the internal and external mindset 200 Table 11.2 Consequences of the fixed and growth mindset 201 Table 11.3 Description of the four categories of leadership mindsets 203

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1 Introduction

Despite many studies and books on leadership, the topic is still a controversial black box (Benmira and Agboola 2021; Bennis 2009). Despite this, leadership is responsible for the effectiveness of many organisational processes. For example, Peter Drucker pointed out that friction, confusion, and underperformance happen naturally in organisations, but leadership controls every other issue. Leadership is as old as humans, and its evolution has closely mirrored the change in management thoughts (Horne 2011). Each evolution forced organisations to emphasise the interaction between decision-makers and their followers, volunteers, professionals, and even family hierarchies to enhance organisational productivity. The various leadership theories were attempts at articulating the values and intentions of leadership such that leadership practice is effective in each evolutionary trend (Britannica 2020a, 2020b). The separation of factory owners from those who worked in the factory caused significant changes in the industrial era (Wren 1994; Miller 2002). This change in orientation of work led to the predisposition of individuals to think and act in particular ways about work, and this led to the alienation and estrangement of workers in four main ways: from other people as the relationship became merely calculative, self-interested,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_1

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and untrusting; from the product of their labour since someone else appropriated what they produced, and they had no contribution as to the usage or sharing of the product; from their labour in that they did not derive satisfaction from work since necessity forced them to offer their labour-power; and work became alien to the individual, which was oppressing to him (Watson 2000, p. 116). The search for resolving the worker’s alienation led to a series of studies conducted in an electric company between the 1920s and 1930s, which concluded that “workers were responding to the increased attention from supervisors” (Cherry 2020, p. 2). The researcher concluded that organisations could enhance their productivity by increasing attention to workers to avoid alienating them from their work. These results introduced the Human Relations Theory (Ward 2021) in the early nineteenth century. The theory concluded that treating workers as valued individuals through increased social bonds increased productivity. The theory advocates working conditions such as empowerment, participation, and favourable treatment. From this point forward, efforts were directed at establishing the factors that drove leadership styles necessary for building social bonds in the organisation. This was the beginning of the evolution of leadership theories to manage human behaviour in the organisation. Past writers had alluded to the possibility that COVID-19 marks another point of change in leadership effectiveness and that leadership behaviours that were effective pre-COVID may not be effective in the next normal post-COVID (Amah 2023; Beer et al. 2016; Gurdjian et al. 2014; Lencioni 2020; Mackay 2021). In addressing this concern, the book itemised three critical issues in leadership. The first is developing a framework that represents the understanding and enacting of leadership in the next normal. Parts 1 and 2 of the book address the past and current forms of leadership in COVID-19. In addition, Part 2 identified the challenges that caused the search for a new framework in leadership. Since the next normal is like a black box, organisations should jointly create the future using inputs from various stakeholders, such as employees, employers, practitioners and researchers, and other participants in the world of work. The book dedicated a chapter to capturing these people’s experiences through well-structured qualitative research to achieve co-creation.

1 Introduction 

3

A second approach arises from the lessons learnt from COVID-19 on the United Nations 17 items Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). The items in numbers 7 to 17 of the SDG refer to organisations operating responsibly to make profits, preserve the environment and community, be ethical, and enshrine equity in all aspects of their operation. These goals call for organisations to review their operational process, define effective performance using triple-bottom-line measures comprising economic, social, and environmental measures (Amah and Oyetunde 2019), and be ethical in all their dealings with various stakeholders. Zozimo et al. (2022) wrote about organisations needing to become fraternal and redefine societal roles. The redefinition of what constitutes effectiveness and aligning the same to the triple-bottom-line measures make an organisation fraternal. The authors stated that such a move involves “paradoxical challenges” (p. 15) that only leaders can handle. Since leadership plays a significant role in achieving these goals, the book included chapters on efficiency in process design and operation, definition and implementation of the triple-bottom-line measures, and ethical behaviours. The third aspect is the consideration that the current process of developing leaders needs to be improved. This is because leaders were inconsistent in enacting the leadership behaviours learned during development before and during COVID-19 (Lencioni 2020; Mackay 2021). For example, Lencioni (2020, p. 46) stated that “some people (leaders) will not embrace the instructions provided because of why they wanted to become a leader in the first place” (Lencioni 2020, p. 46). The author attributed this to the need to incorporate the understanding of leadership and leadership mindset in developing leaders, which are hidden drivers of the leadership styles taught in the development process (Amah 2018). The book has four parts, which are further divided into 12 chapters, as stated next.

Part 1: Evolution of Leadership Thoughts Part 1 has two chapters that address the evolution of the work system in the pre-industrial, industrial, and human relations eras and identified trends in leadership associated with each era. The part aims to show the

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relationship between the evolution of the work system and leadership theorising as a basis for understanding the disruptive effect of COVID-19 on leadership theorising. Part 1 is the past of leadership, which is necessary to understand leadership in COVID-19. The following are the chapters: Chapter 2: Leadership in the Pre-industrial and Early Industrial Revolution Chapter 3: Human Relations Era: Behavioural Theories of Leadership

 art 2: Leadership Enactment and Challenges P in the COVID-19 Part 2 contains three chapters. It brings together two aspects of the role of leadership in an organisation, namely, how the leader manages behaviour and operations. These aspects interact to determine the overall behaviour and performance of an organisation. For example, during COVID-19, how the leader coordinated the demands for operational service and employee behaviour affected the productivity of the organisation. Operations management is an important functional area in any business organisation because it involves sourcing, selecting, and using scarce resources. The human capital element is also one resource that goes into any operational architecture; however, by default, its role in most organisations is taken for granted or not given the required attention or nurturing compared to other resources or inputs. Here lies the bane of most organisations. This bane or gap is because of the leadership dimension of operations management. Thus, the discourse in this part of the book included how operations management has developed as a function of the leadership intervention, response of operational leadership vis-à-vis emergent need for innovation as occasioned by disruption because of COVID-19, behavioural aspects of operations management, and implications for leadership and developing economies regarding operational excellence. The chapters included are: Chapter 4: Evolution of Operations Management Vis-à-Vis Operational Leadership: Effectiveness Versus Efficiency

1 Introduction 

5

Chapter 5: Operational Leadership: Amidst Global Disruption Chapter 6: COVID-19: Leadership Effectiveness and Challenges

 art 3: Leadership in the Next Normal P Post-­COVID-19 I Part 3 contains four chapters. COVID-19 provided an opportunity to review the enactment of the various leadership styles and evaluate their effectiveness. This analysis will justify seeking a reframing of what leadership is and how to develop leaders. The next normal is a black box that needs to be unravelled to understand what and how leadership can be effective. Unravelling the unknowns will require a qualitative study to understand the experiences of the various actors in work and what such experience means in leading the future. Organisations gauge their effectiveness using economic parameters before the twenty-first century. This definition recognised only shareholders as people whose interest was paramount. The various corporate scandals in the twenty-first century, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), have both shown the inadequacy of this definition and the importance of ethics in organisational behaviour. The implication is that organisations must consider performance from how their operations affect the well-being of different stakeholders, including how they handle their internal stakeholders and employees. Organisational performance must measure the effects of organisational operations on society and the environment, and this causes the move from shareholder consideration to stakeholder consideration. This is the origin of the triple-­ bottom-line measure of organisational effectiveness comprising economic, social, and environmental. Organisations that practice the triple-bottom-line performance measure outperform others (Coomber 2014). As identified by Amah and Oyetunde (2019), leadership plays a significant role in both the redefinition of organisational effectiveness and adhering to ethical values in managing employees. Chapters include:

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Chapter 7: Qualitative Study on the Future of Leadership as Seen by Leaders, Practitioners, and Employees Chapter 8: Leadership and Sustainability Development Goals: Triple Bottom-­ Line Measure of Organisational Effectiveness Chapter 9: Leadership and Sustainability Development Goals: The Role of Ethics and Equity in Leadership in the Next Normal

 art 4: Leadership in the Next Normal P Post-­COVID-19 II Part 4 contains three chapters that discuss behavioural operations management as an aspect of organisations that explains the role of the human capital element in its operational architecture; it emphasises the significant role the human being plays in the development and relevance of any functional architecture. Amongst the inputs for operations, the human being is the only one that can think, act, and decide in tandem with the influence of leadership. Past leadership thinking had followed a significant disruption in the structure of work; hence with COVID-19 causing significant disruption in the structure of work and leadership effectiveness, there is a need to look at leadership from the angle of the hidden drivers of leadership behaviour. Hence, this part discussed understanding leadership and leadership mindset as a step, in re-positioning how to select and train leaders. The part concluded with crafting a new approach to understanding leadership post-COVID-19 using data derived from the chapters in Part 3. It produced a leadership model that captured the book’s various discussions. The chapters covered are: Chapter 10: Post-COVID Operational Excellence: Behavioural Operations Management Chapter 11: Incorporating the Understanding and Leadership Mindset in Leadership Development Chapter 12: Conclusion and Epilogue

1 Introduction 

7

References Amah, O.E. 2018. Globalisation and Leadership in Africa: Developments and Challenges for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2023. Linking the Covid-19 Work Experience of SMEs Employees to Post Covid-19 Superior Productivity of SMEs. International Journal of Small Business Management 4 (2): 128–142. Amah, O.E., and K.  Oyetunde. 2019. Determinants of High-Performance Organisations in Africa: A Conceptual Framework and Research Propositions. International Journal of Management, Economics, and Social Sciences 8 (4): 319–333. Beer, M., M. Finnstron, and D. Schrader. 2016. Why Leadership Training Fails: What to Do About It. Harvard Business Review, October, pp. 50–57. https:// hbr.org/2016/10/why-­leadership-­training-­fails-­and-­what-­to-­do-­about-­it Benmira, S., and M.  Agboola. 2021. Evolution of Leadership Theory. BMJ Leader 5: 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1136/leader-­2020-­000296. Bennis, W.G. 2009. On Becoming a Leader. New York, NY: Basic Books. Britannica, T., Editors of Encyclopaedia. 2020a, February 14. Domestic System. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/domestic-­system. ——— 2020b, May 12. Factory System. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www. britannica.com/topic/factory-­system. Cherry, K. 2020. The Hawthorne Effect and Behavioural Studies. Very well, mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-­is-­the-­hawthorne-­effect­2795234. Coomber, S. 2014. Doing Well by Doing Good. London Business School Review 25 (1): 6. Gurdjian, P., T. Halbeisen, and K. Lane. 2014. Why Leadership-Development Programs Fail. McKinsey Quarterly January 2014. https://www.mckinsey.com/ featured-­insights/leadership/why-­leadership-­development-­programs-­fail. Horne, J. 2011. The Philosophical Foundations of Leadership. https://www. leadership-­c entral.com/philosophical-­f oundations-­o f-­l eadership.html. Accessed 7 Jan 2022 Lencioni, P. 2020. The Motive: Why Do so Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities? John Wiley & Sons. Mackay, A. 2021. An HR Expert Outlines the Traits That Make Certain Individuals More Successful than Others When it Comes to Leading a Team. https://www. hcamag.com/nz/news/general/opinion-­the-­four-­mindsets-­of-­leaders/144485.

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Miller, C.E. 2002. Gender & Diversity in the Organisation. Proceeding of the Annual Conference on the Administrative Science Association, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Ward, P. 2021. Human Relations Management Theory: Summary, Examples. NanoGlobals. https://nanoglobals.com/glossary/human-­relations-­manage ment-­theory/. Watson, T.J. 2000. Sociology, Work and Industry. 3rd ed. London: Routledge. Wren, D.A. 1994. The Evolution of Management Thought. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Zozimo, R., M.P. Cunha, and A. Rego. 2022. Becoming a Fraternal Organisation: Insights from the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Journal of Business Ethics 183 (2): 383–399. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-­022-­05052-­x.

Part I Evolution of Leadership Thoughts

Introduction A sense of the past is essential to anyone who is trying to understand the here-and-now of industrial organisation. What is happening now is a part of a continuing development. (Burns 1963)

The above quotation is valid in all aspects of organising, including leadership. It captures the essence of starting the exploration of the future of leadership from what happened in the past eras in organising. Wren (1994) saw the past as the “prologue, the foundation on which the present is built” (p. 3). Part 1 has two chapters that addressed the evolution of the work system in the pre-industrial, early industrial revolution, and human relations eras and identified trends in leadership associated with each period. This part aims to understand the relationship between the evolution of the work system and leadership theorising as a basis for understanding the disruptive effect of COVID-19 on leadership theorising. Thus, the part constitutes the past of leadership, which is necessary to understand leadership in COVID-19 and beyond. According to critical theory principles, leadership theories have been tracking the historical context of the work system (Erciyes 2019). This Theory encourages the in-depth study of issues in society and culture to identify possible changes in the power structure (Raymond 1981). This

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aims to encourage rational thought that leads to transformation since such inquiry anticipates a “release of emancipatory reflection and a transformed social praxis“ (Schroyer 1973, p. 31). The Theory does not state or predict values for the future but allows the unravelling of contradictions in current thinking whose resolution can lead to a better way of handling issues in the future. The conclusion from Critical Theory is that in the study of leadership, the significant changes in how work is organised, and the social context of work, must be factored into the understanding and analysis of leadership. This is the whole essence of Part 1 of this book.

References Burns, T. 1963. Industry in a New Age, New Society. In Organisational Theory: Selected Readings, ed. D.S. Pugh, p. 99. Erciyes, E. 2019. Good Old Days and Future of Leadership Theories. International Journal of Leadership Studies: Theory and Practice 2 (3): 158–168. Raymond, G. 1981. The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schroyer, T. 1973. The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory. New York. Wren, D. 1994. The Evolution of Management Thought. New York: The Ronald Press Company.

2 Leadership in the Pre-industrial and Early Industrial Revolution

Introduction Both leadership and management theories are contextual and historical. This means that the present theories are deeply rooted in past theories. The past is a mirror that makes examining the present easier (Witzel 2009). Like every other management concept, leadership does not stand alone. This is because current leadership thoughts arise from modifying past ideas to align with the realities of the present. For example, the Neo-­ classical and Human Relations theories were not developed in isolation from the Classical and Scientific Management theories. It was an attempt to resolve the contradictions in the former that led to the introduction of the latter. Fukuyama (1989) alluded to this when he stated that the resolution of contradictions inherent in any concept or theory leads to improvement in the theory or development of a new theory. Thus, the knowledge of the past and present and how they are linked is necessary to craft the future. Hence, the past, the present, and the future are not isolated events. They are intertwined, and this complex relationship must be understood to articulate the future correctly.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_2

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Inherent in the definition of leadership are three interacting issues: the leader, the followers, and the environment shaped by many factors, both internal and external to the leader and followers. This means that leadership cannot operate in a vacuum and is heavily affected by these issues (Perruci 2011). For example, Kellerman (2014) stated that leadership requires “contextual expertise,” representing what a leader must consider before enacting leadership.

 lassical and Neo-Classical Theory C of Management Before discussing the various ways work was structured, a necessary foundation is to discuss the two theories of management that encapsulate the various systems of structuring work. The Classical approach to management operated in the early period of the industrial revolution. The approach emphasised output and efficiency and downplayed the role of human beings in organisational productivity and efficiency. The approach took a mechanistic view of the organisation and underestimated the social and psychological aspects of workers’ behaviour. For example, Taylorism believed there was the best way to do a job to ensure maximum productivity and efficiency. It used the industrial study to identify the best way for each job and the steps involved. Employees were trained to handle little aspects of the job and were paid piecemeal. It thus closed its eyes to the effects of work structure on the emotion and psychology of the worker. Other theories under the Classical approach only perfected the incentive system, assuming that the protest witnessed was because of the poor estimation of the incentives. Hence, the Classical theories made the organisation productive but did not address the emotional and psychological needs of the workers. The schools of management under the Classical Theory of Management viewed organisational productivity from the angle of efficient equipment and process. Hence, the assumption was that optimising the equipment and process of work would minimise time wastage and lead to optimal productivity from individuals. People were assumed to be “robots” whose

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emotions and psychology did not interfere with their behaviour and reactions to the organisation’s structure and management. Thus, the Classical Theory concentrated on efficient work methods with little emphasis on human feelings except motivating them through carrots or sticks. The assumptions of the Classical Theory drove the basic tenets of the Scientific Management Theory. However, these tenets were questioned by subsequent theories in the Classical Theory, but the fundamental assumptions about human nature and the organisation remained the same. For example, the administrative school focused on processes and principles of management compared to Scientific Management, which focused on jobs and work. The Neo-classical school questioned Classical over-emphasis on work and job and disregarding the role of human behaviour in organisational productivity. The Neo-classical attempted to understand the factors that affect human behaviour in organisations. The climax of the theories under this school was the inclusion of the system views of the organisation where factors interact to ultimately determine the organisation’s productivity (Barnett n.d.; Malcolm 1994). The theories under the Classical Schools saw human beings as passive actors in the organisation of work and assumed they would do whatever was assigned to them by leaders. The leader was to ensure that workers were adequately rewarded for working according to the designed process. Workers were expected to improve their skills with years on the job. The Neo-classical theories saw human beings as active participants in how work is structured and executed. They assumed that only if human beings are part of the design of the work structure would they be active participants in how work is done. The Neo-classical, thus, identified that human beings are motivated by factors more than tangible rewards, including intangible rewards such as being allowed to play a role in determining how work is done. The history of leadership closely follows the history and evolution of management thoughts. However, there are controversies about the number of such thoughts. Table  2.1 captures the most acceptable management thoughts (Daft 2005; Griffin 2005; Lewis et al. 1998; O’Connor 1999). The detailed explanation of each management theory is not part of the discussion in this book. However, the book discussed the

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Table 2.1  Evolution of management thoughts Class

Management schools

Classical school of thought

Scientific Management Administrative Management Bureaucratic Management Neo-classical Behavioural school of School thought Human Relations Behavioural Science Qualitative School Management Science Operational Management Management Information System System School

Contingency School

Beginning dates

Leadership emphasis

1880s 1940s 1940s

Developing efficient processes and structure to enhance productivity with little emphasis on people

1930s and 1950s

Managing human behaviour as a means to engage and motivate people for high productivity

1950s Using mathematical and 1950s statistical tools and principles 1950s–1970s to enhance managerial decision-making

1960s

1960s

Understanding the organisation as a system that changes input into output and interaction with the environment. Applying principles and processes in line with situational context

Source: Adapted from Barnett. n.d. Management Thought https://www. referenceforbusiness.com/management/Log-­Mar/Management-­Thought.html

foundational assumptions regarding leadership and people management in various thoughts. The schools of thought differ in their assumptions of human nature and the organisation (Barnett n.d). One assumption is that managers are part of planners of work, while workers implement the plans as designed by managers, with each group isolated from the other. The second is the assumption of what was required for organisational effectiveness and the relationship between the drivers of this effectiveness.

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 he Domestic, Putting-Out, and Factory T Systems of Work Organisation Before the domestic system of work, the hunting and gathering system was in operation. Under this system, people worked for the subsistence of their family members (Britannica 2020a; Horne 2011). The societies in this period were described as “affluent societies” not because they had unlimited resources but because they owned what they produced and exchanged the excess outputs with other families in terms that were mutually convenient and equitable (Lee 1968, p. 35; Lee and Daly 1999). People worked during this period because they could see the results of their efforts and were responsible for how the outputs were utilised, including in the exchange process. The management of how work was structured and executed was the family’s responsibility such that no other role of the family members suffered because of their involvement in work (Nolan and Lenski 2004). In the pre-industrial era, work was done within the family under the domestic and putting-out systems. The domestic system existed before the 1700s and was characterised by work being done manually and in the family environment (Collinge 2003; Trueman 2015). Within this period, leadership was based on the family leadership structure. The father was the head, followed by the mother and the children. It was a paternal structure where individuals were managed for productivity, and their activities were seen as processes of enhancing family wealth. The advantages of the domestic work system included better work conditions controlled by the family. Where work was done had enormous consequences on leadership, productivity, and people’s motivation. For example, in the domestic system, workers had significant autonomy to determine the execution of work, had better work conditions, there was the absence of conflict between work and family, the worker was not alienated from work because what was produced belonged to the family, and tension in work was minimal since workers belonged to the family or closely-knit kindred (Trueman 2015). Compared to the factory system, people worked in their spaces without demanding targets and were not controlled by bosses (Trueman 2015). In the factory system, the worker lost all these privileges because another person managed both the worker and the work process.

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Though the final product of the domestic system was of high quality, there came a time when the quantity of the final product using manual labour could not satisfy the growing demand from the merchants. The low demand was attributed to the inability of the family to provide the raw materials needed to expand output. Hence, the merchants who were the customers obtained the raw materials and contracted the production to families in what came to be known as the put-out system (Kranzberg and Gies 1975). Even though some authors see the domestic and putting-­ out systems as synonymous, there are considerable differences in the relationship between the worker and the output of his work in the two systems (Taylor 1989). The putting-out system benefitted the family and the merchants, but the benefit to the latter was more because the merchants sold the finished products at much higher prices while paying little to the family (Mantoux 1961). Furthermore, some families sought advanced payment from the merchants, which ultimately eroded the families’ future sources of revenue and subordinated them to the merchants. This situation led to what economic historians refer to as the gradual deprivation of “the rights of ownership over instruments of production” (Mantoux 1961, p.  65). The putting-out system marked the first step in the act of people selling their labour and receiving wages. According to Mantoux (1961), during the putting-out system and owing to the loss of control over how work was done and loss of income, the workers resorted to defiant behaviours such as selling the supplied raw materials and replacing them with inferior materials. This appeared to be the origin of defiant behaviours in the workplace, which can be attributed to the loss of control of the work process and the final product. Wren (1994) referred to the selling of labour and gradual loss of control as the first steps in the marginalisation of labour, which was continued during the factory system that followed. The domestic and putting-out systems decreased because of the industrial revolution, which led to growth in the market and the use of machines for production in a shared location called a factory. It was difficult, if not impossible, for the manual labour of the domestic and putting-out systems to meet the increasing demand from merchants. The factory system began in the eighteenth century and involved having specialised roles in a large building (Britannica 2020b). Hence,

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merchants procured machines and installed them in a central location, giving rise to the factory system. In this system, the merchants provided the raw materials, capital, and the building housing the operations. Work was moved from the family to a central location outside the family. Two factors contributed to the emergence of the factory system of work. The first was the inability of the domestic and putting-out systems to meet the growing demands of the industrial revolution. The second was the merchants’ desire to control the work process and the final product since they had made significant investments. The primary purpose of the factory system was to combine machinery and new technology in an environment of the division of labour to lower costs and improve productivity (Moy 2022). The changes altered how work was coordinated, discipline was enacted, and how people were remunerated. The system had four key features: centralisation, increased sale of produced items, changes in work organisation, and extensive division of labour. The drivers of these changes were cost reduction, drive for increased efficiency, and the utilisation of technology. However, these changes gave rise to marginalisation and alienation of the workers. In the factory system, the use of machinery and the resultant division of labour reduced employees’ skills. They were made to do repetitive jobs, hoping that output per worker would increase. This benefitted the merchants and not the worker, who was paid a fixed wage irrespective of output. Furthermore, the system affected work practices, had a societal impact on the use of child labour, changed the nature of marriage from social status to labour class, undermined the old patriarchal authority, and brought the entire family under the merchant’s control. As a result of these changes, workers protested the treatment they received from the supervisors and factory owners and their alienation from work. Work alienated human beings from the family environment for the first time because they saw work as different. When the factory started, it concentrated on family domestic workers, while in the second part, technology led to the development of factories that housed different domestic workers. At the central location, workers left their families and worked in the central location called factories with supervisors and merchants. Emphasis shifted from workers producing the entire product to producing only part. The role of the supervisor or leader was to get maximum

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effort from the worker. Work became monotonous, and workers were alienated from the outcome of their efforts because the outcome belonged to another. The factory owners set working hours and the condition of service. They introduced management science to improve the efficiency of the workers. Workers formed unions to take care of their interests because of the poor condition of service and disregard for their welfare. The relationship between workers and their supervisors was transactional. The human relationship movement led to the interest in enhancing leaders and follower relationships (Cherry 2020; Wren 1994; Ward 2021). Evidence from the History of Western Civilisation (n.d) indicated some negative consequences of the factory system. The factory owners set the working hours, and the industrial engineers set the pace of work. These removed the worker’s control of the sequence and pace of work. This was the first step in the alienation of the worker from his work. The inequality in the wages paid to different gender made the factory owners employ mainly women and children with less wages than men to minimise cost. For example, children were paid between 10% and 20%, and women were paid 25% of men’s wages. This constituted the second level of the worker’s alienation from the output of his labour. The work structure supported the increased division of labour, which led to the worker being responsible for only a fraction of the work process. This also alienated the worker from the entire output of their job since they could not see the entire output.

 hanges in Moving from the Domestic to the Factory C Systems of Work Gray (1932) itemised the changes that occurred in the household arising from the factory system. In the pre-factory system, the task and household were the centres of activity; there was an effective division of labour among the members of the family, work was distributed based on the expertise of the family members, apprenticeship was the basis of enhancing and preparing younger members for advanced roles, and the wellbeing of the household was based on the capacity of the members to produce. In the factory system, the household was not the centre of

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activities, workers were paid wages considered by the merchant as fair, and the well-being of the household was no longer dependent on the activities of the household members but on wages earned. As explained by Gray (1932, p. 244) “people have more leisure but work under pressure, the span of working life has been shortened from each end.” Summarising the situation of the households under the factory system, Hughes (1930, p. 30) stated that “the majority who work for money do so because it is necessary for self-support or to eke out family income. The average earnings of the average workman are less than enough to keep even the present small family at the health and decency level.” In the domestic work system, household members’ work schedules were formally adjusted to ensure maximum efficiency and productivity while maintaining individual well-being. In contrast, in the factory system, such adjustment was removed because workers went to work at different times. Each person was responsible for arranging personal rest and social life “independent of other members of the household” (Gray 1932, p. 246). This situation is referred to as the collapse of the leisure-income choice. The household could decide to stay on the leisure-income continuum in the domestic system. In contrast, in the factory system, such freedom was removed because the worker had to submit to the factory’s rigid rules of time utilisation. Thus, the factories were described as “dark satanic mills” where exploited and dispirited army of men, women, and children was engaged for starvation wages (Bythell 1983, p. 17). It was a place where the workers received starvation wages. At the same time, the enormous fruits of their labour were appropriated by the factory owners and shared among the various factors of production, excluding labour. Thus, unlike the pre-­industrial era systems, the factory system exhibited clear class distinction, with the wage earner subordinated to “and perpetually at odds with his employers” (p. 17). In the domestic system, the household is the focus for production, production for the marketplace, and sustenance, while in the factory system, this focus was removed. The implication is that instead of owning the fruit of their labour, the members of the household sold their labour for wages, and the final product of their labour was owned by the merchants who hired them (Cowan 1976). Table 2.2 describes the differential effects of the domestic and factory systems on the household.

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Table 2.2  Differential effects on workers in the factory and domestic systems Areas of differences Location of work

Factory system

Domestic system

Concentrated in a factory in the urban areas Took advantage of workers and offered low wages to women and children Filled with costly machines owned by the merchants

Dispersed in the homes in villages Utilisation of the Mobilised every member of worker the household to work hard Production Production shops have equipment simple and manual tools owned by the worker Classification of Class distinction with factory Head of the household has workers owner superior to the leadership status and workers directed others in a fatherly manner People’s Gave rise to hopelessness in Happier even if materially well-being the worker and conflict worse off than future with self generations Relationships in Low quality time with other High quality time and the household household members household intimacy leading to strained because work roles were relationships and loss of properly coordinated and family intimacy in the family domain Role allocation Introduced gender inequality Roles were allocated based and in the allocation of roles on each person’s perceived remuneration and remuneration. contribution to optimal household productivity. Work-life balance Increased because people Proper coordination of roles had little time for and timing created an recreation and other opportunity for rest and activities other social activities Source. Adams et al. (1984), Behnke (2016), Bythell (1983), Maxine 1991

McGrath (2014) summarised the management of organisation since the industrial revolution as “execution, expertise, and empathy” (p. 1). To gain the scale needed to obtain improved productivity, the factories had agents and managers that emphasised execution to achieve mass production. This was when the emphasis was on management solutions such as labour specialisation, process standardisation, and workflow planning. Management emphasis in this period was efficiency, lack of variation, consistency in production, and productivity. The overall aim of the

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management activities was input-driven cost reduction. The period coincided with the Scientific Management and accompanying theories of management, such as Gnant and others. In the era of expertise that followed the execution era, the concepts from sociology and psychology were adopted to better understand the industrial setting. This was the period when management emphasis shifted from output alone to including the search for workers’ motivation and engagement. Another significant discovery in this era was the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership effectiveness. The era of empathy was driven by the need to handle the widespread dissatisfaction in the factories by emphasising favourable employee contracts and value propositions. Workers witnessed the build-up levels of inequity and demanded that managers and merchants act empathetically to discharge their roles. McGrath (2014) reviewed the history of management and proposed that management scholars should find answers to “what new roles and organisational structure make sense? what does it take to be a leader? and how should the next leader be taught?” (p. 5) as a pathway to craft the leadership of the future. The purpose of the questions is to hasten the movement from execution and expertise to empathy. Despite the differences identified earlier, not all management writers agree that there were fundamental differences between the domestic and factory systems. Berg (1991) argued that the perceived differences were artificial. The author looked at the size and environment of each system to arrive at this conclusion. For example, the author argued that the domestic system had harmony, cohesiveness, and consensus but experienced “conflict and cutthroat competition” (p. 4). Even though there was competition, they were more in producing quality products rather than on the extortion of product users. The community was always involved in the activities of the domestic producers to ensure that the competition between them was healthy. Ashraf and Galor (2011) and Galor (2005) posited that the average per capita in the domestic system was below the subsistence level, while that of the industrial revolution increased considerably. The relevant issue is not the level of the per capita but who benefitted from the increase. Whatever was achieved in the domestic system belonged to the workers who produced the goods. In contrast, in the

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factory system, the family received fixed wages, and the merchants and other factors of production shared the excess. Thus, even though the factory system produced higher per capita, the excess did not affect the well-­ being of the worker who was alienated and marginalised.

Conclusion The chapter aligned heavily on the critical theory (Raymond 1981) in analysing how the work structure affected both the worker and the enactment of leadership. The theory concluded that in the study of leadership, the significant changes in how work is organised, and the social context, must be factored into the analysis of leadership. This means that the work structure and the social context in which work is done will affect the enactment of leadership. The structure of work involves how work is done and the pace of work, while the social context involves the location where work is done. Table 2.3 summarises the environment of work and the resultant leadership behaviour for the domestic, putting-out, and factory systems. In the pre-industrial era, the workers had access to the fruit of their labour and were responsible for appropriating such fruit. The family was a significant unit in the production of goods. Leadership succession was clearly defined. Most of the terms of leadership coined in the Neo-classical era, such as participative, shared, and inclusive leadership, were common even though they were not labelled as such. For example, the leader was not autocratic but discussed issues with other family members to arrive at the best way to structure and pace work to enhance the productivity of each member of the family. The dichotomy between leader and worker prevalent in the Classical era was non-existence because the family operated harmoniously, and each member recognised that their productivity was necessary to enhance the final output. The family discussed workflow and pacing to ensure they locate these appropriately while maintaining optimal well-being for all the family members. The putting-out system had some characteristics of the domestic system initially. However, over time the first sign of the worker’s alienation from his work and the product of his work emerged.

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Table 2.3  Leadership value system and associated behaviours

Historical era

Environmental condition

Pre-industrial era: domestic & putting-out systems

• Life conditions support the group’s traditional/tribal way of thinking • The community played a significant role in the functioning of the craft system and moderates competition to make it healthy and productive • The workers control how work is done and pace and use the power to work efficiently to optimise well-being. • The worker owned the output in the domestic system and dispensed it as they wished -Worker did not own the output in the putting-out but had a significant say in how the output was distributed • Life conditions support individual power/exploitive way of thinking • Both the family and the community did not have any role since the merchants took over control of the process of work • The process engineers and managers took control of the design of workflow and pace, leaving the worker as a robot to do what was told • Even though the worker was a significant factor in production, he was paid a fixed wage. In contrast, any excess from improved production was shredded to other factors of production controlled by the merchants • Worker was alienated from his work and the output of his work

Industrial Revolution era: factory system in the classical period

Associated leadership behaviour • Leadership is conferred from the position of the patriarch • Followers rally around the leader. • Leadership was interested in the output and the well-being of family members and thus managed how work was done and the sequence • Leadership goes to the most powerful. Lords over followers who must respect the leader • Leaders expected the workers to follow orders and not complain • The separation of work from the worker created a division between the leader and the worker

Source: Adapted from Grisby, J. 2016. The six different mindsets of leadership

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The total alienation of the worker reached its climax during the factory period. The driver for the factory system was enhancing productivity and not the worker’s well-being. To achieve this, the emphasis shifted to what McGrath (2014) called the era of execution and expertise. To enhance execution, power for designing workflow and pacing was removed from the worker and vested in a specialist who produced such without contribution from the worker. To enhance workers’ expertise, work was subdivided into many parts in what came to be known as the division of labour. The worker was no longer responsible for all aspects of production and became further alienated from the final output of labour. The drive for execution and expertise disregarded the emotional and psychological effects of the design on the worker. Another aspect of this era was the excessive drive for cost control. The workers were regarded cost, and all cost control measures were applied. This led to wage inequality and the drive to employ women and children because they earned less than men. The division of the role of planners and doers of work created two antagonistic groups that never cooperated because they had different agendas in the workplace. The agitations that followed the work structure in the factory system in the industrial revolution led to the rise of human relations or Neo-classical thoughts of management that emphasised empathy and cooperation. Ashraf and Galor (2011) and Galor (2005) argued that the increased output from the factory system led to an increase in the income per Capita compared to the domestic and putting-out system on the subsistence level. The household owned what was produced in the domestic system and dispensed according to their plan. The household had the power to design workflow and pacing to satisfy the family’s well-being. In the factory system, such power was lost and the wage earners had no share in the increase per capita resulting from their efforts. The increase in per capita was achieved by creating wage inequality and reducing family interaction since women and children were preferred over men to control the wage bill. The success achieved in the domestic system and the agitations of the factory system provide some lessons to be understood in crafting the future. Comparing the leadership enacted in each era show that participatory, collective, and empathetic leadership drove better productivity and reduced industrial strife. The domestic system demonstrated that

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cooperation and collaboration of all participants in the work process were necessary to unleash the collective intelligence of the work participants. Workers are interested in both the workflow and pacing, and this ownership enhances emotional and psychological satisfaction. When people own the process, they are motivated to apply effort because of the sense of satisfaction achieved. A system can achieve higher output, but without the enhanced relationship, such an increase will not be sustainable or valued by the marginalised group. The next chapter will build on these lessons while discussing the evolution of leadership during human relations or Neo-classical period by reviewing the Great man and trait theories (Cawthon 1996; Dziak 2019; Johns and Moser 1989), the behavioural theory (Denison et al. 1995), and the value-based theories (Benmira and Agboola 2021; Yurii et al. 2018).

References Adams, C., P. Bartley, J. Lown, and C. Loxton. 1984. Under Control: Life in a Nineteenth-century Silk Factory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ashraf, Q., and O. Galor. 2011. Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch. American Economic Review 101: 2003–2041. Barnett, T. n.d. Management Thought. https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/ management/Log-­Mar/Management-­Thought.html. Accessed 10 August 2022. Behnke, A. 2016. Effects of the Industrial Revolution. Modern World History Interactive http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/ IndustrialRevolution/IREffects.html. Accessed 9 August 2022. Benmira, S., and M.  Agboola. 2021. Evolution of Leadership Theory. BMJ Leader 5: 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1136/leader-­2020-­000296. Berg, M. 1991. Artisans and Factory System in the Industrial Revolution. https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/268499/files/twerp379.pdf. Accessed 9 August 2022. Britannica, T., Editors of Encyclopaedia 2020a, February 14. Domestic System. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/domestic-­system. ——— 2020b, May 12. Factory System. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www. britannica.com/topic/factory-­system Bythell, D. 1983. Cottage Industry and the Factory System. History Today 33 (4): 17–23.

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Cawthon, D.L. 1996. Leadership: The Great Man Theory Revisited. Business Horizons 39: 1–4. Cherry, K. 2020. The Hawthorne Effect and Behavioural Studies. Very well, mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-­is-­the-­hawthorne-­effect-­2795234. Collinge, S. 2003. Domestic System vs. Factory System. https://cdn2.hubspot. net/hubfs/605391/Blog/Unit%20Resources/5th%20Grade/5.4%20day%20 1%20domestic.pdf. Cowan, R.S. 1976. The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century. Technology and Culture 17 (1): 1–23. Daft, R.L. 2005. Management. 7th ed. Australia: Thomson/South-Western. Denison, D.R., R. Hooijberg, and R.E. Quinn. 1995. Paradox and Performance: Toward a Theory of Behavioural Complexity in Managerial Leadership. Organisation Science 6: 524–540. Dziak, M. 2019. Great man Theory. Salem Press. Fukuyama, F. 1989. The End of History? The National Interest 16: 3–18. Galor, O. 2005. Unified Growth Theory: From Stagnation to Growth. In Handbook of Economic Growth, ed. P.  Aghion and S.  Durlauf, 171–294. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Gray, G. 1932. Changes in the Household Resulting from the Industrial Revolution. Social Forces 11 (2): 242–248. Griffin, R.W. 2005. Management. 8th ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Grisby, J. 2016. The 6 Different Mindsets of Leadership. CMI. https://www. managers.org.uk/knowledge-­and-­insights/resource/6-­different-­mindsets-­of­leadership/. History of Western Civilization. n.d. The First Factory. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-­hccc-­worldhistory2/chapter/the-­first-­factories/. Accessed 10 August 2022. Horne, J. 2011. The Philosophical Foundations of Leadership. https://www. leadership-­c entral.com/philosophical-­f oundations-­o f-­l eadership.html. Accessed 7 January 2022. Hughes, G.S. 1930. Mothers in Industry, U.  S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 357; U. S. Women’s Bureau, Bulletin 30. Johns, H.E., and H.R.  Moser. 1989. From Trait to Transformation: The Evolution of Leadership Theories. Education 110: 115. Kellerman, B. 2014. Hard Times: Leadership in America. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Kranzberg, M., and J. Gies. 1975. By the Sweat of Thy Brow: Work in the Western World. New York: Putnam. Lee, R. B. 1968. What Hunters Do for a Living, or How to Make Out on Scarce Resources. In Man the Hunter, eds. R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, 30–48. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton. Lee, R.B., and R.  Daly. 1999. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, P.S., H.G.  Stephen, and P.M.  Fandt. 1998. Management. 2nd ed. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing. Malcolm, W. 1994. Organizational Behavior Revisited. Human Relations 47 (10): 1151–1164. Mantoux, P. 1961. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row. Maxine, B. 1991. Women’s Work and the Industrial Revolution. ReFresh 12: 1–4. McGrath, R.G. 2014. Management’s Three Eras: A Brief History. Harvard Business Review. Digital Article. Moy, C. 2022. Factory System. The Economic Historian. https://economic-­ historian.com/. Accessed 8 August 2022. Nolan, P., and G.  Lenski. 2004. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macro Sociology. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. O’Connor, E.S. 1999. The Politics of Management Thought: A Case Study of the Harvard Business School and the Human Relations School. Academy of Management Review 24 (1): 117–131. Perruci, G. 2011. Millennials and Globalization: The Cross-cultural Challenges of Intergenerational Leadership. Journal of Leadership Studies 5 (3): 82–87. Raymond, G. 1981. The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. New York: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, G.R. 1989. The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860. New  York: Rinehart & Co the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution. http:// industrialrevolution.sea.ca/innovations.html. Accessed 8 August 2022. Trueman, C.N. 2015. The Domestic System. History Learning Site. http:// www.historylearningsite.co.uk/domestic_system.htm. Accessed 8 August 2022. Ward, P. 2021. Human Relations Management Theory: Summary, Examples. NanoGlobals. https://nanoglobals.com/glossary/human-­relations-­manage ment-­theory/. Witzel, M. 2009. Management History: Text and Cases. UK: Routledge.

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Wren, D. 1994. The Evolution of Management Thought. New York: The Ronald Press Company. Yurii, S., M. Yevgen, and L. Nataliia. 2018. Evolution and Modern Tendencies in the Theory of Leadership. Baltic Journal of Economic Studies 4: 304–310.

3 Human Relations Era: Behavioural Theories of Leadership

Introduction The leader’s function is such as to assist the group in maintaining its customs, its purposes and its attitudes undamaged by the chance ineptitudes of the less experienced or less skillful members. This is a conservative function, calculated to maintain the society in an unvarying circle of procedures. A group so maintained may be expected to display integration in a high degree. (Whitehead 1936, p. 69)

The aforementioned quote highlights the importance of leadership in driving individual and organisational productivity. The importance became heightened during the factory system of work structure when people worked from a central location. Peter Drucker put it right when he described the importance of leadership in organisations using this quote “Only three things happen naturally in organizations, friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.” The factory system began in the eighteenth century and involved having specialised roles in a large building (Britannica 2020). In this system, the merchants provided the raw materials, capital, and the building housing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_3

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the operations. Work was moved from the family to a central location outside the family. This movement led to the heightened importance of the role of leaders in managing productivity and people. Researchers, thus, began the search for what drove success in leadership. Leadership trends during this period can be broadly categorised into two major components. The first is the trait theory from which the Great man theory was derived. This theory was based on the belief that successful leaders had similar traits, so the search was reduced to looking for the traits that point to success in leadership. The Great man theory lost its importance when it became difficult to manage the large number of traits expected to drive strong leadership behaviour. The second problem was that some traits expected to drive success in leadership did not drive success across all individuals. The identified traits did not drive leadership success consistently across individuals and situations. The failure of the trait theory led to the search for the behaviours in leaders that lead to success. The first theory in this category is the Blake and Mouton managerial grid. Two lapses of the managerial grip are the idea of having one effective leadership style and the idea that such a style works in all situations. Subsequent theories under the behavioural style tried to make leadership more effective by considering the above lapses discovered in the managerial grid. For example, the situational leadership style incorporated the situation into the managerial grid to account for changes in leadership arising from the different situations in the enactment of leadership. The situational leadership theory questioned the idea of the best leadership style that worked in every situation and with every subordinate. The theory combined the leadership behaviours of the managerial grid and the development level of subordinates to arrive at an effective leadership style appropriate for individuals and situations. The last focus on leadership was the introduction of the value-based theory, in which leaders live out their espousing values while enacting leadership roles.

Human Relations Management Concept Ward (2021, p.  1) defines human relations management theory as “a premise of organisational psychology which suggests that employees’ productivity and motivation can be increased through social bonds in the

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workplace.” It recognises the worker as a unique individual whose commitment and engagement can be elicited when treated positively, and this would drive individual and organisational productivity. Unlike the Classical approach to management, the human relations approach sees employees as active participants in the execution of work. The precursor of the school is the Hawthorne studies conducted in a company in Chicago (Baker Library n.d.). The studies contain several experiments, and one was singled out to determine the causes of employee turnover in the Mill spinning department, where turnover was as high as 25% despite the low turnover in other companies. The overall conclusions from the studies include the following: • The main drivers of employee behaviour were non-economic factors. • Employees are not isolated and unrelated individuals but social beings. • Contrary to the claims of the Classical Theory, division of labour is not the best work structure method. • Informal groups are inevitable in organisational settings. • Group dynamics modify employee behaviour. • Leadership behaviour and communication play a significant role in organisational behaviour. The Mill Spinning experiment was driven by the desire of the company to improve employee well-being as a means to engage employees, reduce turnover and discourage unionism (OpenStax 2019). The main findings of the experiment, which eventually led to the development of the field of organisational behaviour, include: the motivation of employees depends on many factors instead of the single-factor assumption in the Classical Theory. Though the factors can be organised in many ways, the significant components bearing the factors include the individual, the group, the leaders, and the organisational system. This is the system view of organisations. Effective motivation can be achieved by understanding the unique and interactive effects of the factors in these components. The experiment recommended treating people right as individuals, enhancing positive group values and relationships, workers’ attitudes and behaviour, and creating an effective organisational environment. The Hawthorne studies identified that the system view of organisational behaviour

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produces a very efficient way of managing people and enhancing productivity. The Human Relations Theory significantly affects how leaders enact their leadership behaviours. It recommended that leaders place great emphasis on the management of people instead of narrowly emphasising the organisation, because such change in emphasis will develop people who eventually will play a significant role in the organisation’s effectiveness. The Human Relations Theory’s tenets helped shape the understanding of organisational behaviour and its management in other settings. According to Freedman (2022), leaders can use the tenets of the Human Relations Theory to improve their effectiveness in the following ways: • To enable employees to treat work as natural as any other of their activities. • Share the big picture of the organisation instead of the narrow emphasis arising from specialisation. • Share leadership with employees through the concept of distributive leadership. • Train employees such that they develop their skills. • Set up a reward system that recognises the contribution of the team and the individual. A significant component of the Human Relations Theory is the search for what motivates employees. Various theories developed from the studies under the Human Relations Theory postulated several drivers of the motivation of employees. Theories X and Y (McGregor 1960) categorised employees based on their inclinations to work. Theory X postulates that people naturally hate work and that leaders must use persuasion or force to make them work. According to this theory, the role of the leader is to be a “law enforcement agent” to ensure that people do the job, reward those who work according to plan, and punish those who do not. Motivation is believed to be externally driven. Theory Y postulates that people naturally love to work and willingly do excellent jobs when the proper environment is created. Hence, the leadership role is to create a positive and motivating work environment that elicits the natural tendency in employees to love and apply efforts in work. The assumption is

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that motivation is internally driven when the external environment is encouraging. Thus, the two theories lead to two different ways of motivating people. Some people behave as stated in theory X; however, an error is to assume that workers can perpetually be classified along any of the theories Y and X. When leaders live in this error, there is the tendency to treat people the way leaders perceive them to be, and this can drive the behaviour of employees in the direction of the perception of the leader in what is known as self-fulfilling prophesy (Eden and Ravid 1982; Field 1989; Field and van Seters 1988). For example, when leaders believe that people act perpetually along theory X, they treat them as postulated by the theory. There is a high tendency for people to behave according to the theory. However, according to the Human Relations Theory, the environment created by the leaders from their poor perception drove the employees’ actions and not the employees’ natural tendency to hate work. The Human Relations Theory allows leaders to avoid this error by recognising the link between how people are treated and how they apply themselves to work. Maslow’s hierarchy recognises the link between employees’ motivation and their expectations from their work. Maslow established a hierarchy of needs, from basic to self-actualisation (Maslow 1943). It established that the predominant needs of the employees will drive their motivation and that the employee would only be motivated by higher-order needs if a lower need is fulfilled. Research has established that people have a hierarchy of needs, but the link between these hierarchies and motivation is more complex than the theory postulated (Guest 2014; Mitchell and Daniels 2002). The expectancy theory explored how people decide to invest their efforts to work (Kanfer et al. 2017; Van Eerde and Thierry 1996). It introduced the thought process employees go through to determine whether to invest their efforts and the strength of such efforts. None of the motivational theories listed here and others that are not listed would give an accurate account of how to motivate employees; however, when the theories are considered jointly, the how and why people are motivated can be accurately analysed, and actions taken to enhance people’s motivation. For example, the Maslow theory would give what employees need to be motivated. Still, the expectancy theory allows these needs to be compared with what the organisations provide and other

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external factors to arrive at the level of motivation. Sonnenfeld (1985) reviewed the various motivational theories arising from Human Relations Theory and itemised the following as the contributions of the theories to the management of people in the organisation: • The complex nature of the human person is such that their behaviour has several drivers with complex relations. These drivers are in the individual, the group, organisational system, and the external environment. • Groups affect or modify individual behaviour through group norms and processes. For example, motivational theories can state what motivates people, which can be modified in a group setting. • The need for managers to understand employees’ needs on the individual and group level, the nature of the interactions of the various factors, and that the one-size-fits-all approach to motivation is questionable. • That employees’ participation in decision-making in the organisation will enhance their engagement and willingness to apply their efforts to the work. Treating people according to the dictates of the Human Relations Theory will enhance their engagement and productivity and reduce turnover and other defiant behaviours (Corporate Leadership Council 2004; Fingerprint for Success n.d.). Leaders can put the theory into practice in the workplace through behaviours that reflect the following: • Help employees to link their tasks to the overall business objectives (Achor et al. 2018) • Asking for the input of employees through a regular feedback mechanism (Jordan 2018). • Recognise that employees are individuals with unique needs and expectations. Hence, leaders must recognise the shortcomings of adopting the one-size-fit all forms of motivation. This is necessary when crafting the company’s employee value proposition (Fingerprint for Success n.d.). • Immediate offering of reward and recognition when employees act as expected (Mann and Dvorak 2016).

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• Allow building relationships and bonding through group association (GurChiek 2014). • Treating employees as human beings with emotions, not machines that passively follow orders. Before the Human Relations Theory, employees’ productivity was driven by the physical condition of work and employee pay (Sharma n.d.). However, Human Relations Theory showed that social factors significantly shape employee motivation and contribute to organisational effectiveness. It assumes that the quality of the relationship between the leaders and the employees plays a significant role in the organisation’s effectiveness. The approach recognises that organisational productivity must occupy the role of leadership. However, it takes the approach that such productivity is mainly driven by the behaviour of organisational participants driven by the interaction of many complex factors. To achieve this, the approach encourages understanding “psychological processes, informal groups, nature of conflict and change, and relationships among different actors in the organisation” (Sharma n.d., p.  2). The emphasis on organisational behaviour and systems approach to organisational effectiveness makes it necessary for leaders to pursue these goals: • Must understand the behaviour of individuals and the groups they belong. • Study, understand, and analyse interpersonal relationships in the organisation. • Higher organisational productivity can only be achieved through employees, not processes or procedures. • Accurate understanding of the behaviour of employees must take an interdisciplinary approach that involves the various behavioural sciences. Mayo (1945) alluded to the over-insistence of improving production methods and processes and disregarding the power inherent in group collaboration. The author saw this error as the leading cause of the challenges in modern organisation. After comparing the conditions of the individual in the pre-industrial and the industrial eras, the author

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concluded that in the former era, group codes dictated social order, which moderated individual behaviour, and the individual was subordinated to the group decision. For example, in the domestic era, the individual was subordinated to the codes in the group, which is the family. This arrangement gave stability to individual behaviours. This pattern was altered in the industrial revolution era, with individuals from different backgrounds working in a central location called the factory. Such individuals constantly searched for meaning by moving from one group to another. Describing the pre-industrial society Mayo (1941) stated thus, “The social code and the desires of the individual are practically identical; every individual participated because his strongest wish is to do so” (p. xvii). Durkheim (1951) contributed to the debate by insinuating that the industrial revolution destroyed the relationship and corporation prevalent in the pre-industrial era. The author saw this change as the origin of the hopelessness experienced by workers in the industrialised factories. Thus, Gide (1909) concluded that “collaboration in an industrial society cannot be left to chance; neither in a political nor in an industrial unit can such neglect lead to anything but disruption and catastrophe” (p. 24). Every social group faces two pertinent problems, and the emphasis placed on each profoundly affects the success of such a group. These are either to satisfy material needs or to “build spontaneous cooperation” (Mayo 1945, p. 9). The pre-industrial era emphasised the latter, while the industrial era emphasised the former. Based on the tenets of the Human Relations Theory, the efficiency of the organisation will depend on developing social skills to drive spontaneous cooperation in the work setting. Specific terms were derived from the Hawthorne Studies, which drive the concept of Human Relations Theory. These include “factory as a social system, equilibrium, leadership style, participation, morale, communication, interviewing, informal and formal work groups and cooperation” (Mayo 1945, p.  59). These terms were applied in the various theories under the Human Relations Theory. For example, the system view and contingency theory heavily influenced the factory as a social system. For leaders to be effective in the human relations era, they are called to develop soft social skills which enable them to communicate effectively, be empathetic, listen appropriately, not quick to judge but consider spoken and unspoken words, and be open.

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The understanding of organisational behaviour is a major contribution of the Human Relations Theory. The study of organisational behaviour revolves around the nature of man and the organisation (Vishakha n.d.). Four assumptions surround the nature of man; namely, behaviours are motivated, though people may have many things in common, their uniqueness must also be recognised, people must be handled as whole persons that play various roles in life, and they must be treated in ways to preserve their human dignity. In evaluating the nature of organisation, the following must be considered: organisation is an open social system that interacts with its external environment, the mutuality of interest between organisation and individuals in the organisation, and organisations must be managed to create a common interest. Most time, the common interest is defined as the survival of the organisation and the well-being of the individuals within the organisation. Appropriately recognising the nature of people and treating them correctly produces high performance, job satisfaction, decreased turnover, employee participation, healthy informal relations, and optimal use of resources. Table 3.1 highlights the various management theories and how the organisation was modified, while Table  3.2 indicates the difference between the Classical and the Neo-classical theories. The summary of the changes that occurred, as reflected in Table 3.1, includes the following: Table 3.1  Evolution of organisation and management theories Traditional (1900–1930) (Classical)

Modifications (1930–1960)

Emerging views-system views (1960–onwards)

Taylor-Scientific Management Weber-Bureaucracy Administrative/Process Management Theory-Universal Management Principles

Mayor-Hawthorne Studies Human Relations Maslow, McGregor, Behavioural Sciences Quantitative Decision Making

Organisation as a system Goal oriented Technical, structural, psycho-social Management System

Source: Adapted from Uttarakhand Open University (n.d.) Principles of Management (p. 79)

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Table 3.2  Difference between the classical theory and the Human Relations Theory Classical theory Emphasised only the formal organisational structure Organisations are assumed to be a rational and interpersonal system Views works from the economic man principle Emphasised the mechanistic view of organisations Assumes organisational behaviour is the result of rules and regulations made by management People are homogeneous Priority is on what is good for the organisation Encourages authoritarian style of leadership Atomistic view of man Focused on the physical environment of the job

Human Relations Theory (Neo-classical) Recognised the existence of both formal and informal organisational structure Views organisation as an emotional and social system Advocates social man view of workers Emphasises the sociological and psychological view of organisation Organisational behaviour is the product of workers’ attitudes and emotional reactions People are heterogeneous Priority is on what is good for both the organisation and the workers Encourages democratic style of leadership Social view of man Efficiency depends on human relations and workers’ attitude

Source: Adapted from Zieger (2019)

• The traditional views of the organisation emphasised organisational processes, procedures, and structures but did not consider the human elements involved in the organisation. • The modifications made under the Human Relations Theory emphasise the human element of the organisation with little emphasis on traditional elements. • The system view of the organisation advocates viewing the organisation and the human elements as components of an open system with interaction within the system and between the system and its external environment. The main difference between the Classical and Neo-classical theories is the shift from over-emphasising process and structure to people and relationships created through interactions. The leadership styles in the

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classical and Neo-classical eras are different, so the organisational climate would also be different. Thus, they demonstrate significant differences in how leadership effectiveness is perceived. For example, if organisation is perceived as having only formal structures, then leaders may see the formation of informal structure differently and even perceive it as a challenge to the formal structure and disregard for the line of authority. Also, if individuals are perceived as homogenous, a uniform way of motivating people will be the norm. However, if they are heterogeneous, it will be appreciated and accommodated that unique individual needs must be understood in organisational behaviour. Actions arising from the tenets of the Classical Theory include the following (Bertalanffy 1951; Trist et al. 1963). Managers must develop a science of work to replace opinion and rule of thumb and determine the correct time and method of each job; the only responsibility allocated to workers is to do the job; every other responsibility resides in management, organisation to select and train workers for each job, and such must be governed by the science of work already established. The workers must carry out their roles as stipulated by science and receive an incentive based on the improved skill of doing the job, cooperate with management in the development of the science of work, and accept to surrender the planning of work to manage and maintain the doer status all the time. Thus, the Classical assumptions make the worker a passive observer of how work is structured but only obey management when such structure is established. Management saw workers as people who could not be involved in the job except to do what they were told to do and when to do it. The Neo-classical or Human Relations Theory further enhances the understanding of human behaviour. Before COVID-19, Stoner et  al. (2004) had insinuated that human relationships and time make it imperative that the traditional ways of managing people should be reviewed. The authors called this the “era of dynamic,” which drives the discovery and trial of other management theories aligned with time and changing business environment. These theories are described by Stoner et  al. (2004), Cole (2004), and Lawal (2012) as “re-inventing organisations, new organisational environment, multi-culturalism, ethics, social responsibility, consumerism, corporate governance, entrepreneurship, and knowledge management” (Stoner et  al. 2004, p.  6). The work of

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Stoner et al. (2004) pointed to the need to constantly look at existing management theories from the ever-changing lens of the organisational environment, such as what COVID-19 created.

Transitions of Leadership Theory Another area of inquiry that occupied the minds of behavioural researchers was “what makes an effective leader?” (King 1990, p. 43). Is it setting processes and procedures to be rigidly followed by employees or managing employees’ productivity by setting up a motivating work climate? The diversity in the answers to these questions in each era can be elicited from the differences listed in Tables 3.1 and 3.2. This diversity represents the transitions in leadership theorising across the eras of management thought. However, despite leadership being “a hazy and confounding area of study” (Bennis 1959, p. 259), the author utilised a developmental perspective to create the evolutionary trend in leadership. King (1990) identified nine eras in the theorising in leadership, namely “personality, influence, behavioural, situational, contingency, transactional, auto-­ leadership, cultural and transformational” (p.  44). These eras covered periods when traits defined leadership effectiveness (Fiedler 1967; Jenkins 1947), search for the most effective leadership behaviour (Blake and Mouton 1978; Griffin et al. 1987; Hunt and Larson 1977; McGregor 1960), situational leadership which recognised the existence of multiple effective leadership styles based on the nexus between leader, follower, and situation (Hersey and Blanchard 1969, 1977; McCall and Lombardo 1977), and the value-based leadership style that encourages the leader leading by being true to espoused values (Bass 1981). After reviewing the evolution of leadership theories, King (1990) recommended that the future of leadership must consider the trends in the nine eras recommended by the author. The author identified that there would be a link between leadership theorising and its use by practitioners when researchers consider the following (p. 50); leadership requires an interactive process with behavioural, relational, and situational elements; leadership occurs at the individual, dyadic, group, and organisational levels, leadership has a top-bottom and bottom-up application, leadership

3  Human Relations Era: Behavioural Theories of Leadership  Trait Theory (1920)

Behavioural Theory

Contingency Theory

-Great man theory

-Ohio State & Michigan Studies

-Situational leadership

-Common traits & characteristics

-Value-based Theory

41

The Future

-Task Orientation

Fig. 3.1  Evolutionary transitions of leadership theories. Source: Author but inferred from the works of Blake and Mouton (1978), McCall and Lombardo (1977), Hersey and Blanchard (1969), and Simmons (2011)

happens internally within leader-subordinate interaction and externally in the situation, and leadership can motivate intrinsically and extrinsically. King (1990) saw the tenth era of leadership as that which will “add further variables that will broaden our understanding of leadership, while retaining theoretical constructs and linkages that are now well understood” (p. 50). The new form of leadership must drive the following from subordinates to be effective, elicit positive action, make leaders out of them, and make them leaders of change in the organisation (Bennis and Nanus 1985). The study of the various eras of leadership highlights that understanding leadership depends on the time of definition and the transition in leadership. Figure 3.1 indicates the transitions and definitions. Each evolutionary trend derives from the previous and attempts to correct the shortcoming of the past, bearing in mind the time and situational changes in the present. For example, the failure of the trait theory was the genesis for the search and creation of new leadership theorising articulated in the behavioural theories of leadership (Simmons 2011). The value-based leadership encapsulates all the past leadership theorising.

Value-Based Leadership Style The frequent corporate scandals in the twenty-first century led to the drive for value-based leadership styles (VBL) (Hoch et  al. 2018). The styles do not place emphasis on hierarchy but on the values of the leader, which should drive their leadership behaviour. VBL values diversity in the location of authority in the organisation. The celebration of diversity

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did not blind the need for value-based leaders to “establishing common values” (Shatalebi and Yarmohammadian 2011, p.  3704). Value-based leadership is defined as “leading by example, that is doing the right thing for the right reasons and not compromising core principles” (Dean 2008, p. 61). VBL emphasises the follower and the achievement of their needs while pursuing the organisational goals. The most important interest of the VBL is followers and not organisational goals. The leader does this while being truthful to the leader’s value systems. The leader’s role is to create a collective responsibility in the organisation. The leadership values must conform to the common interest; hence the values espoused by all must not violate this common interest. This means that the common interest must be known by all and must be crafted from the interest of all organisational participants. The behaviour that VBL allows is acceptable to the whole company. This behaviour must be enacted by both the leader and followers. Thus, the role of the VBL is to subscribe to values that drive sustainable success, lead people to subscribe to those values, and ensure that the behaviour of both the leader and followers conform with the values espoused. George (2003, p. 9) sees value-based leadership as leaders leading with “purpose, values, and integrity.” The leadership styles in VBL aim to create organisation with sustainable productivity, economic growth, and the well-being of all organisational participants. Values are espoused and accepted by organisational participants when a VBL leader is in control. Hence, organisational participants find alignment with their values, which in turn enhances their commitment to the struggle and growth of the organisation. This type of alignment increases individual and organisational productivity (Barrett 2006). The values of an organisation are the collective values of its leaders, past and present, and are embedded in the organisation’s history (Barrett 2006). This is why it is crucial to install VBL, which will create appropriate values that are subscribed to by all the participants and will form the basis for acceptable organisational behaviour. The positive alignment of the organisational, leadership, and followers’ values is possible only when the values created by leaders for the organisation are not selfish but accommodate the values of other organisational participants. The alignment drives commitment to the organisation’s goals as a step towards obtaining the goals of other organisational

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participants. For the alignment to be positive, three factors must be present: the leader’s behaviour, relationship with other leaders, and followers. According to Barrett (2006, p. 5), internal cohesion and values alignment is achieved by leaders who share the same vision and values as all organisational participants. Such leaders work for the common good and internal collaboration that drives individuals’ and organisations’ productivity and enhances followers’ well-being. Value-based leaders explore the past trend in leadership to ascertain what must be continued and stopped. They use this knowledge to craft the future. What they demand from others is first subscribed to by the leader. Hence, VBL is not another way of leading but a radically new way that sees followers as agents of productivity and growth. The leadership style involves a radical shift in the mentality and understanding of leadership and a radical shift in attitude from what Barrett (2006, p. 7) calls “what is in it for me? To what is in it for the common good?” Some known VBL styles include servant, authentic, and transformational leadership (Copeland 2014). There is a conceptual overlap between the VBL styles; however, Hoch et al. (2018) found that authentic and transformational leadership share a lot in common and may be redundant when applied together, but servant leadership is a stand-alone style that explains more variance in individual and organisational outcomes.

Conclusion The essence of the chapter was to understand the nature of management and leadership in the pre-industrial and industrial eras, which encompasses the Classical and Neo-classical periods. The change from the domestic system to the factory system was more than a cosmetic change. It affected how work was done and structured, how the workers felt about their work and the importance of work. In the pre-industrial era, the worker owned the establishment of the structure and pace of work and also owned the outcome of work. The worker was able to manage the continuum from work to leisure such that worker well-being was enhanced. The industrial era created factories as a common place for work. It removed the right to create the structure and pace of work, and

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the decision on where to operate on the continuum of work and leisure. The worker also lost power over the outcome of the work. All these alienated the worker from work and the result of work. The factory owners felt the worker’s reluctance to apply effort was a natural tendency. So the leaders took it upon themselves to structure and pace work and offered wages at the subsistence level. This further alienated the worker. Later in the Neo-classical and Human Relations Theories, the idea that the worker must be recognised and that relationships with leaders play a significant role in their productivity became known. It was not only the nature of work that was altered in these eras. The nature of leadership was also affected. For example, in the Classical era, the leader believed that productivity was based on the excellent development of work structure and pacing of work and assigning the same to workers. Division of labour was to improve specialisation such that by doing the same work, the worker would improve skill and productivity. Thus, the leader became a “policeman” whose duty was to monitor the worker since the worker was believed to hate work and must be pushed to work. However, the Neo-classical era calls for leaders who create relationships and a positive, motivating environment that makes workers willing to apply their efforts. Leadership was structured to mean exhibiting behaviours that drive the relationship, empathy, and willing involvement in work. The chapter concluded by evaluating the differences in the understanding and meaning of leadership in the eras and saw these as eras in leadership theorising. Each leadership era built on the previous era’s positive accomplishments while reducing identified shortcomings. This shows that leadership theorising is dynamic and not haphazard but follows a pattern that can be analysed to find a way forward in leadership theorising. Some leadership theories had their foundation in the leader and no reference to the people in the organisation. For example, the trait theory had its foundation in the exhibited traits of successful leaders. Others recommended the combination of the leader, the employees, and the work situation. This is the approach followed by situational and value-­ based leadership styles. A leader’s effectiveness in the future cannot be determined independently of these theories.

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Part II Leadership Enactment and Challenges in the COVID-19

COVID-19 provided an opportunity to evaluate the enactment and evaluation of effectiveness of the various styles of leadership recommended by the behavioural theories of leadership. This chapter brings together two aspects of the role of leadership in an organisation, namely how the leader manages behaviour and operations. These aspects interact to determine the overall behaviour and performance of the organisation. For example, during COVID-19, how the leader coordinated the demands of operational service and employee behaviour affected the organisation’s productivity. Operations management is an important functional area in any business organisation because it involves sourcing, selecting, and using scarce resources. The human capital element is also one resource that goes into any operational architecture; however, by default, its role in most organisations is taken for granted or not given the required attention or nurturing compared to other resources or inputs. Here lies the bane of most organisations. This bane or gap is because of the leadership dimension of operations management. Thus, discussions in this section of the book will include the following: how operations management has developed as a function of the leadership intervention, the response of operational leadership vis-à-vis emergent need for innovation as occasioned by disruption because of COVID-19, behavioural aspects of operations management, and implications for leadership and developing economies regarding operational excellence.

4 Evolution of Operations Management Vis-à-Vis Operational Leadership: Effectiveness Versus Efficiency

Introduction Operations management has evolved and is still evolving as a functional domain. In a highly competitive world where resources are scarce, the occurrence of incessant incidents of global disruption, and emerging energy crises, leadership at various strata should leverage operations management as a competitive advantage. The business ecosystem needs a paradigm shift that would galvanise a competitive advantage to elicit incremental value add; an efficient transformation of scarce resources and optimal management of the human capital resources would be the game changer. In an era of global disruption occasioned by emergent technologies and shifting customer preferences, organisations must forge sustainable alliances with customers and competitors to face an evolving world of high uncertainties and ambiguity (Goffee and Jones 2019). This situation has invoked a paradigm regarding the drive to create value in the form of tangible products and services, that is, alignment with the strategic intent of most organisations. And since operations entails the flow of

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value from the transformation of inputs to outputs, the intervention of the human element in this equation of things has been challenged to upscale innovation and creativity along this transformational conduit. This provides an explanation for what, why, and how operations management has evolved in tandem with the vagaries of the forces of demand and supply; this requires an operational type of leadership that would explore a fit between effectiveness and efficiency. Albeit, the drive for effectiveness provides inertia for leaders or executives in the context of an operation, not only to react with appropriate operational acumen but also to shape it by illuminating aspects of the operations architecture that would positively impact the competitive priorities of cost, quality, flexibility, and speed. Thus, the engagement of the operations leadership is beyond effectiveness, but it encompasses efficiency. An operational leadership style that would elicit effectiveness and efficiency should leverage the operations workforce’s “hand” and “heart.” To activate this balance, the leadership style should embody a behaviour that aligns with the organisation’s culture as an impetus for pivotal traction with people engagement, processes, and systems. A critical aspect of any organisation is how scarce resources are transformed with the impact of the human capital element into products and services. Operations management has the requisite architecture to provide and actualise this direction for the business as a whole in alignment with the strategic intent of the organisation in question. How well this strategic role is re-enacted would determine the efficient and effective deployment of organisational resources in delivering value to its customers. However, since customer needs are ever-­ evolving and the global market environment is constantly in flux, the leadership style for contemporary operations must also evolve in tandem with current global and market realities. With this school of thought, some pertinent questions need to be addressed: 1. How can operational leadership drive innovation and change as embodied in efficiency and effectiveness in value delivery to the market? 2. How can operational leadership embrace agility and proactively build the right internal capabilities?

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 volution of Operations Management: What, E Why, and How? Operations management, a functional domain in management, has metamorphosed in tandem with the vagaries of modern business challenges and intricacies. Globally, the business terrain has empowered the customer with varying options and choices regarding the selection of products and services; the customer has become well informed and exposed to many appealing and competitive options; thus, organisations must provide these offerings within acceptable competitive priorities of cost, quality, speed, and flexibility. However, while incremental expectations exist from the customers’ end, limited organisational capabilities remain fixated; this situation has warranted an operational framework that has metamorphosed and evolved but is fraught with multifaceted operational challenges. Aside from these competitive priorities, an essential, incremental dimension that operations management must contend with as a critical functional business area is resilience. Resilience depends on three critical parameters: resistance, recovery, and sustainability. These parameters have determined and influenced emergent global business realities; operations management as a functional area in management science has evolved with these realities over the years (Krajewski et al. 2016; Moscoso and Lago 2017): • Invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1785 facilitated the movement of goods via railroads. • Invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1794 introduced the concept of interchangeable parts; this heralded the great industrial revolution. • The era of modern manufacturing happened in the nineteenth century with the creation of the mechanical computer by Charles Babbage. • Introduction of the division of labour, which provided the beginning for scientific management in operations and supply chain management; Frederick Taylor leveraged this framework in 1911 for the scientific approach in operations and supply chain management; this gave birth to the idea of repetitive manufacturing.

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• In 1909, Henry Ford invented the assembly line, heralding the era of mass production. • In about 1930, the dimension of strategic planning for achieving product proliferation and variety was introduced by Alfred Sloan; this also resonated with the concept of sales and operations planning (S&OP). • In 1978, Taiichi Ohno introduced the concept of the lean system used by the Japanese Production System. Service organisations have leveraged the lean system in driving value to their customers. • The 1980s witnessed technology usage as characterised by the computerisation of operations and supply chain management. • The 1990s brought about automation and digital technology, which improved the deployment of enterprise resource planning systems for manufacturing and service organisations. • The 2000s eclipsed an increased focus on sustainable and responsible drive for operations and supply chain management; this era has explored how organisational business operations can be managed less negatively on the planet. From the aforementioned chronological sequence of how operations management has evolved over the decades, it is evident how operational leadership’s impact has helped influence and reposition its relevance towards driving incremental value to the customer. It is about the continuous improvement of human capital interventionists as a function of a proactive leadership style. So how has operations management evolved vis-à-vis emergent global business realities? The impact of global disruption and changing market conditions occasioned by global disruption have necessitated incremental pressure for organisations to modernise and modify their operations. According to Chhabria et al. (2022), due to the dramatic shifts that the operational architectures of most organisations have experienced in the past decades in tandem with contemporary vagaries coupled with available tools, optimisation of manual work is no longer sufficient, there is a need for continuous improvement ungirded by innovation in all ramifications. While the field of operations management of yesteryears was mainly hinged on manual interactions, today’s operations management is

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hinged on automation and digitalisation. Hence, to truly foster a culture of innovation, organisations using the functional area of operations management to drive incremental value-add in terms of products and services must leverage emergent technologies to power, scale, and refine their operational architectures; this development in the field of operations management would warrant the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and emerging technologies in transforming the process of manufacturing and service delivery, the nature of work, inside plants and service hubs, and the way organisations deliver value to their customers. Every value chain depends on operations to transform its inputs (materials, applications, customers, energy, etc.) into value-added outputs (products and services) as internal and external customers require. This important transformational attribute of operations management depends on four key variables: processes, capacities, people and organisation, and flows (Moscoso and Lago 2017; Morgan 2019). The operations management framework transforms these variables into outputs within the expected competitive priorities of cost, quality, speed, and flexibility. These variables, to a large extent, determine the competitiveness of the operational capability of an operations framework in alignment with the market requirements; these market requirements are evolving and have evolved critically as a function of the recent global disruption that has affected most businesses. Thus, another probing question is why the evolution has recently characterised the field of operations management. The reasons why these disruptive tendencies have characterised the field of operations management in recent times can be itemised into four main blocks (Bhattacharya et al. 2020; Fender 2020; Zhang et al. 2020): • Incremental concerns for looming environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) goals; • Incidents of global disruptions that have influenced market demands and requirements; • Increasing need to build new operating models that can make innovative products and services for a global market and reach within the affordable, competitive priorities of cost, quality, speed, and flexibility;

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• Alignment and embedment of societal needs into operating process architecture and function towards delivering impact and operational leadership re-awakening. Concretely, operations management must re-enact this drive in the following exigencies: 1. Reimagine its core operating models, which encompasses processes, capacities, people, and flows, towards delivering long-term societal impact and operational sustainability. In a world witnessing global disruption amidst increasing expectations from market and customer, the operating model must be re-jigged to provide incremental value by leveraging improved process flows, capacities, systems, and people. 2. Produce and offer innovative products and services hinged on compelling digital solutions and experiences. There is a growing need and awareness for innovative solutions, products, and services; operations management warehousing this capability, to a large extent, to curate and innovate the value chains by using emergent digital and emergent technologies. 3. Grow operational excellence prowess in alignment with burgeoning market requirements. 4. Supplement and augment traditional value chains with dynamic evolving chains equipped to create and deliver innovative solutions, outcomes, and experiences with the yearnings of emergent global customers. Increasingly, traditional value chains have been impacted somewhat by recent global disruption to a large extent; this incident warrants that evolving supply chain architecture creates and delivers value add to the dynamic market. 5. Improve competitive operational capability to deliver low-cost capacities and customised product and service offerings. With increasing global disruption occasioned by the fragility of most business models, it is imperative that operations leaders rethink and retool their operations architecture to deliver value according to dictates of the evolving market. 6. Energise global data architecture and digital capabilities to predict future operational excellence geared towards agility and resilience.

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7. Build, retrain, inspire, and empower a digitally savvy human capital to drive operations. 8. Embrace a transformative operational leader who drives innovative initiatives in a volatile and rapidly evolving business environment.

Dimensions of Evolution of Operations Management To some extent, an operations system possesses a competitive priority and competitive capability in transforming inputs into outputs (value). A competitive priority is a critical inertia that an operation architecture or supply chain must possess to deliver incremental value to satisfy its internal and external customers; a competitive capability is what the system provides concerning the parameters of cost, quality, time, and flexibility (Krajewski et al. 2016; Moscoso and Lago 2017; Chhabria et al. 2022). For most organisations, there exists a yawning gap between their competitive priority and competitive capability due largely to shifting customers’ preferences and demands as occasioned by global disruption and emergent technologies. There is an urgency for established business organisations to leverage emergent technologies to build new, resilient operations models to close this gap (Schwab 2016). An offshoot is that new technologies have enabled organisations to improve their operational frameworks. This transition has provided a leeway for business organisations to access new capabilities and talents to retool and empower their workforce in readiness for future operations. From a global perspective, operations management has evolved along two major slants. One from the impact of digitisation, and the other is the by-product of digitisation; the impact of digitised technology on the human element of operations management. Emerging technologies and the influence of these technologies on the human aspect of operations have revolutionised operations management (Chhabria et  al. 2022; Benavides et  al. 2016). Aside from emerging technologies, operations management has experienced incidents of rapid digitisation, contactless style of operations, workforce virtualisation, and innovation in talent

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sourcing, resulting in a critical imperative for business organisations to revamp and reconfigure their operations architecture. This situation has hitherto made operations leaders rethink, engrain, and leverage emerging technologies to aid the understanding of their operations. Operations management is an important business functional that makes or mars a business organisation if leadership fails to understand and leverage it as a pivot for competitive advantage. The reason is that it consumes and engages a chunk of the resources, equipment, and human capital that is domiciled in any organisation; thus, it is fundamental that operational leadership has the capability to grapple with emergent operational issues within global and local contexts. This requires a fundamental paradigm shift; a shift that calls for a unique type of management change for updated operating systems, requisite management infrastructure, and mindset and behavioural capabilities. The external global environment is going through a dynamic flux, and the internal operations architecture has to change also in tandem with global business realities and vagaries. Hence, operations leaders should have recourse to new emergent technologies beyond basic productivity tools accessible to the operations workforce. There is an urgent need for operations leaders to begin to pull: rethinking and retool the operating systems, management infrastructural ecosystems, and mindsets and behavioural capabilities of the human component of their organisation. The implications of this unfolding scenario are myriad: • Operations leaders would have to reimagine their management to incorporate and address technology improvement to consciously elicit a new wave of productivity, continuous innovation, and talent management. • Business organisations that seek to leverage operations management as a sustainable source of competitive advantage need to better understand and refine their workforce experience by providing an enabling work environment that would convert attrition to attraction. In practical terms, it means operational leadership need to provide and re-­ enact ample opportunities for efficient collaboration via remote working inter-phase, as occasioned by flexible operational frameworks.

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• Most business operations architecture are witnessing dramatic waves in their operational value chain that now necessitate novel operating tools and ideas for innovating continuous improvement in their operations. • Operations leaders need to innovate their operating structure and standardisation; this relates to rethinking the management infrastructural model in alignment with current external realities. A recourse to emergent technologies would enable operations leaders to improve their management systems incrementally. • To continuously align internal and external operational realities, operations leaders need to embrace a culture of continuous innovation by thoughtfully rethinking and retooling their current operating state towards redesigning their envisaged future operating model. This would entail scenario planning via democratising certain operations aspects towards eliciting innovative ideas and execution from the human capital in operations. • It is also imperative that operations leaders innovate and upskill their workforce’s capabilities because it is crucial for mindsets and behavioural capabilities in anticipating and achieving future market conditions. Aside from fostering an operations culture of continuous innovation and leveraging emergent technologies to elicit and upscale efficient delivery of value to the customer, it is imperative that operations leaders do periodic SWOT analyses of their operations architecture in tandem with other functional areas. This requires the involvement of the leverage of the internal human capabilities of the organisation. Consequently, the use of human capabilities, despite the emergence of technological impact on operations management, holds sway because it is the human aspect of operations that can think and act (Bollard et al. 2017; Ogah 2018). Thus, no matter the level of influence of emergent technologies, an operations architecture’s behavioural component still requires operations leaders’ care and attention as operations management evolves as a functional discipline. In other words, operations management needs to be more human than digital even as the impact of emergent technologies evolves in tandem with global vagaries.

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 ffectiveness Versus Efficiency: Operational E Leadership Perspective Operational leadership is a leadership style that is required for efficient and effective operations. Efficiency relates to the well-being of the process flow, while effectiveness is the optimal engagement of the human capital element. Process architecture must be efficiently managed, and the human aspect of the operations should be effectively inter-phased with the process flow configuration for optimal value delivery to the target market. Effectiveness and efficiency are two important concepts that relate to operational leadership. However, these two concepts are hinged on the well-being of the basic unit of any operation: process, and its inter-phase with the intervention of the human element during the various stages of input transformation. An efficient operation is that whose process configuration operates at a low cost and effective operation that provides support for the execution of the company’s strategy; a major key performance indicator for any operations architecture is a low-cost process that is focused on being efficient and effective; these twin goals should align with the strategic fit of the organisation (Anupindi et al. 2022; Meredith and Shaffer 2011). Aside these, efficient and effective operations should also aim at the competitive priorities of quality, flexibility, and dependability with some measure of trade offs in alignment with preferences of the customer. Operational leadership should balance these aspects of operations for optimal value delivery to the target customer.

 erspectives of Operational Leadership: P Implications for Developed and Developing Economies Some emerging global operational leadership perspectives abound in developed and developing economies. In the developed climes, the focus of operational leadership has advanced largely due to the scope of improvement that has been attained regarding value delivery. Advances

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recorded so far can be adduced to the extent of leveraging digitisation and the high-level capabilities of operational staff to improve operations and supply chain management. Regarding developing countries, there is still a gap in the need to leverage digital capabilities; lack of adequate infrastructural capabilities, insecurity, and unstable policy framework are relevant bottlenecks that negatively impact the advancement of operational leadership. However, according to Bhattacharya et al. (2020 pages 131, 134, and 135), operational leadership can have recourse to improve value delivery for both developed and developing countries: 1. Urgent need to reimagine operations process architecture for the domestication of manufacturing and supply chains. This re-­positioning would necessitate digital supply chain transformation by leveraging technology and human capital capability; organisations need to drive operational innovation to adapt their process, capabilities, and management systems to elicit innovations; leaders must be willing and flexible to learn, adapt, and change regarding managing processes, people, and systems. 2. Leveraging operational expertise and amplifying global solutions would drive a value proposition that would merge physically with digital data to deliver value add. Thus, operational leadership need to jump-frog beyond the framework of the traditional operations to create dynamic delivery towards transforming operations ecosystems. 3. There is a need for operational leadership to leverage data as a leeway to drive global competitiveness and foster resilient operational frameworks.

Conclusion Operations management has evolved as a functional area with the required leadership capabilities. Critical concerns revolve around balancing effectiveness and efficiency with the intervention of the capabilities of operational leadership. This is applicable to both developed and developing countries; however, while the developed clime is already optimising operations management with the advent of emerging technologies, there

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exits an opportunity for the developing clime to upscale human capability in leveraging emerging technologies in this direction. However, in a bid to drive value incremental to the customer with improved effectiveness and efficiency, there is a need for operational leadership to adopt agility, resilience, and digitisation to balance the efficacy and efficiency in creating and delivering value to the dynamic market.

References Anupindi, R., S. Chopra, S.D. Deshmukh, J.A. Van Mieghem, and E. Zemel. 2022. Managing Business Process Flows: Principles of Operations Management. Pearson. Benavides, L., F. Lefort, R. Khanam, and O. Lovera-Perez. 2016. Breakthrough Technologies Fundamentally Change the Game. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/ our-­insights/new-­operations-­management-­systems-­for-­a-­digital-­world. Bhattacharya, A., N. Lang, and J. Hemerling. 2020. Beyond Great: Nine Strategies for Thriving Era of Social Tension, Economic Nationalism, and Technological Revolution. Hachette book group, Inc. Bollard, A., A.  Singla, R.  Sood, and J.  Ouwerkerk. 2017. Transforming Operations Management for a Digital World. https://www.mckinsey.com/ capabilities/mckinsey-­d igital/our-­i nsights/transforming-­o perations-­ management-­for-­a-­digital-­world. Chhabria, V., K.  Choy, R.  Sood, and R.  Whiteman. 2022. New Operations Management Systems for a Digital World. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­insights/ new-­operations-­management-­systems-­for-­a-­digital-­world. Fender, M. 2020. Next Generation Supply Chains: The Guide for Business Leaders. 1st ed. The Choir Press, ISBN 978-1-78963-115-9. Goffee, R., and G. Jones. 2019. Why Should You Lead Anyone? What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader. Harvard Business Review. Krajewski, L.J., M.K.  Malhotra, and L.R.  Ritzman. 2016. Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chain. 11th ed. Pearson Education Limited. Meredith, J.R., and S.M. Shaffer. 2011. Operations Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Morgan, G. 2019. Images of Organisation. United Kingdom: Sage Publications.

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Moscoso, P., and A. Lago. 2017. Operations Management for Executives. Realise the Full Potential of Your Organisation. McGraw Hill Education. Ogah, M.S. 2018. Productivity and Employee Change Strategies in Two Manufacturing Organisations (Doctoral dissertation). https://scholarworks. waldenu.edu/do/search/?q=marvel%20ogah&start=0&context=6238631 &facet=. Schwab, K. 2016. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. World Economic Forum. Crown Publishing Group. Zhang, F., X. Wu, C.S. Tang, T. Feng, and Y. Dai. 2020. Evolution of Operations Management Research: from Managing Flows to Building Capabilities. Journal of Production and Operations Management 29 (10): 2219–2229. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13231.

5 Operational Leadership: Amidst Global Disruption

Introduction Operations and supply chain management have evolved dramatically in recent times as occasioned by the incidents of global disruptions. A critical key performance indicator for most business organisations before the incident of COVID-19 was agility; in the post-COVID-19 era, another key performance dimension that has emerged as a critical requisite for business continuity is resilience. Amongst the vital operational variables of the process, capacity, flow, organisational matrix, and the influence of the human capital element that determine the agility and resilience of any organisation, the people aspect is a critical enabler for any operations. Here lies the importance of the operational dimension of leadership. The extent of engagement of organisational employees in driving performance depends on the leadership style and operational climate created by the leader (Amah 2018). Thus, if the leadership style is toxic, it would negatively impact the other key operational variables such as process flow, available capacity, and organisational op, rational framework. During a post-COVID-19 era that is characterised by global disruption; it is insufficient for organisations to possess robust operational variables; it has © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_5

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become imperative that the deployment of these variables should be done in a favourable operational environment that would give optimal impetus to agility and resilience that organisations need to survive during the unpredictable period of uncertainty and global disruptions.

What Is Operational Leadership? Globally, most business organisations, especially in developing countries, contend with fluctuating availability of scarce resources and energy crises. An emergent option for some of these organisations is to leverage their operational framework as a competitive advantage. Amongst the main functional areas in management such as marketing, finance, human resources, and strategy, operations and supply chain use a larger portion of the organisational resources in driving value-add to the organisational customer and market requirements; this leverage, in turn, determines the level of efficiency and utilisation of the scarce resources and ultimately affects the return on investment. A critical determinant of the level of productive engagement of organisational employees and efficient transformation of inputs (scarce resources) depends largely on the leadership style that drives the operations function of an organisation; a dedicated leadership style that is required for an efficient, agile, and resilient operational framework is called operational leadership (OL). Another dimension of this OL has consummate components of transformational and servant leadership styles.

 he Essence of OL in a Post-disruption: Service, T Manufacturing, and Hybrid Organisations Organisations do not need to reinvent the wheel to leverage their operations function towards retaining relevance; however, an impactful OL is required to drive agility and resilience during a globally disruptive world; hence lies the crux of the matter for service, manufacturing, and hybrid

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organisations. Large service-oriented organisations rely heavily on people while leveraging their operations architecture to deliver value for their customers; those in the manufacturing spectrum deploy machines and people to re-enact value delivery; hybrid organisations leverage people and machines to drive value to their customers. In all these three dimensions, the human element (people) is a critical underlying factor required for operational excellence; operational excellence is leveraging operations management as a key competitive priority. Operational excellence as a measure of efficiency is beyond process excellence. An essential aspect of human involvement in any organisation’s operations is that the involvement and deployment of people can make or mar the relevance of an organisation vis-à-vis how it delivers value to its customers. The “what,” “how,” and “why” of value delivery to the customer is sacrosanct because every business exists to address the customer’s pain points. Thus, OL is geared towards ensuring that the human capital element that constitutes the human dimension of operations is optimally mobilised for this innovation and design thinking. Post-COVID-19 disruptions have exacerbated the availability of scarce resources and productive engagement of human aspects of operations. Also, some developing nations in Sub-­ Saharan Africa are increasingly beginning to experience human capital deficits; this situation has created a huge gap regarding motivation and retaining required human capital engagement for driving optimal operations in most organisations. Thus, this situation has also necessitated an OL to navigate the framework of organisational operations with optimal agility and resilience. Under this emergent circumstance, most organisations are struggling with how to drive innovation, design thinking, or revamp their operations models in a bid to innovate on the value delivery stream to their market; this challenge is becoming incremental difficulty and even harder; thus, there is a need for organisations to accelerate the transformation from within via operational excellence; this emergent situation requires the optimal integration of scarce resources (inputs) and people with the timely intervention of OL with different implications for service, manufacturing, and hybrid organisations within and without Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Service-Based Organisations Organisations delivering services to their markets require a huge dosage of OL because the service process flow is highly dependent on people. The nature of the leadership style that exists in an organisation determines and influences the orientation and culture of the operating environment. This leadership ambience shapes the operating ethos of how the employees are positioned to drive value to the organisation’s customers. Unlike tangible products, a typical output in service-based environment is co-created by the customer to a large extent and consumed simultaneously; the assessment of the quality of the service by the consumer, which is subjective to an extent, is dependent on the behaviour of the human inter-phase in this situation. And this is also dependent on the ambience and motivation provided by OL. Globally, why the need for service-based organisations is growing, and the operational capability required by OL is also being challenged concerning operating systems, management infrastructure, mindsets, and behaviour. Unfortunately, this transformation requires an evolving operating model to help OL’s operational transformation, improve efficiency, and reduce service-led bottlenecks (Kalra et al. 2020). Introducing a new operating model is feasible for service-­ based organisations, but it is somewhat difficult; it is even harder for organisations to attain this feat because a service system requires the human touch to drive the customer experience and journey. Incrementally, under pressure from customer expectations and attendant global disruptions, there are emergent business needs to accelerate transformation and innovation from within. Most organisations are fraught with barriers arising from deficits and deficiencies regarding optimal involvement and engagement of the human capital element. A critical looming quagmire that would affect service organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa is the issues of a capital flight being experienced in most developing countries. This emergent situation has huge implications for OL in service-based organisations; thus, there is a consummate need for an aligned OL that would create the right organisational climate and governance. In a globally disruptive world that is increasingly tending towards service-based, there is a dire need for business organisations to activate and pull organisational

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levers to capture the full value of its transformative and innovative levers geared towards addressing the pain points of its customers and markets. This exigency would require a paradigm shift that would leverage a function-­based organisation to one built around customer experience and service-oriented journeys; a critical dimension of this shift is an evolution of a service-based organisation that would orchestrate an integration of the human capital element and technology: an entire customer-onboarding process that would drive end to end customer experience leveraged on excellent OL. According to Chhabria et  al. (2022), it is expedient now that OL strives to redefine operations within management disciplines with a modern tool kit that would solve the issue of global disruption by integrating the advantage of emerging technology and human capital element. Coherently, organisations that embark on this journey should aim at a culture of operational excellence as a function of efficiency, design thinking, and innovation geared towards optimal value delivery to their market. For example, service-based organisations, as occasioned by global disruption, need to do the followings: • Activate the deployment of effective operating systems and tools to aid its employees so that less time is spent on manual tasks towards creating more time for finding better ways of providing value for the business customer. Organisations leveraging this initiative would reduce attendant cycle times of their internal operational activities and processes and, ultimately, reduce the organisational throughput time. • OL need to reimagine the management infrastructure of its operations to incorporate and address the deficit in technology improvements; this initiative would help service organisations elicit a new wave of productivity, continuous innovation, and global talent management. There is a need for OL to proactively explore innovative ways to engage, motivate, and retain the required human element, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Otherwise, this would create operational bottlenecks for service operations in the near future. • OL responsible for deploying leadership across varying service sectors should explore innovative ways to engrain technology, specifically emergent technologies, to understand their operations. OL must seek

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to leverage this understanding of its customer pain points, design thinking, and market requirement in alignment with the emerging realities of an ensuing global ecosystem. • OL must re-twink their organisational structure in conformity with emergent global vagaries. This situation would warrant changing the operating model and organisational structure by upskilling, reskilling, or retooling the human workforce towards improving the operational health of the human capital by leveraging operational levers to improve productivity using the following steps: –– Changing the operating model and organisational structure. –– Upskilling or reskilling the workforce –– Improving the health of the workforce via appropriate working ambience, performance management systems –– Shift to remote working/working from home as a way of using work-life integration Aside from the earlier-enumerated factors, underestimation must include the human factor that OL needs to contend with in service operations. Regardless of advancement in emergent technologies and intervention by process automation, the transition to next-generation operational excellence in service operations would be hinged on cultural and mindset shifts. And due to the nature of service operations whereby value-add cannot be inventoried, and experience is co-created by the customer’s participation, OL must galvanise the operational involvement of employees and customers alike for the adoption of technologies to add value; also, service-­ based organisations need to elicit the employees’ confidence (human capital) via the deployment of training programmes, communication, and reskilling as transformation pivots. OL should serve as an anchorage to drive sustained leadership support from the top-down using “journey owner” towards enacting enduring customer journeys; this transformation process should be captured as a priority for the entire C-suite agenda. Another dimension of leveraging OL in service operations, which is also applicable to manufacturing and supply chain organisations, is

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redefining operating systems, not as a requisite for driving organisational changes but eliciting a paradigm shift regarding performance management processes. Appropriate metrics and incentives should be core parameters for tracking and managing performance. OL’s measures and standards to drive behavioural change in alignment with continuous improvement and process flow are as important as instilling an operational excellence DNA; organisations must transform models or systems with people or human capital capable of driving change. In other words, developing new or reimagined roles would require change architects such as process designers, change agents, coaches, and trainers. On a long-­ term basis, OL needs to have recourse to a structured developmental programme that would attract high-potential human capital from within the organisation to develop an internal capability that would accelerate operational excellence and build capability for broader organisational upscaling and reskilling.

Manufacturing Organisations An essential game changer for manufacturing organisations is the alignment of operating systems with management infrastructure and organisational employees’ capabilities, mindsets, and behaviour. With the intervention of OL, a manufacturing-based organisation leverages the alignment of its process flow and optimal employee engagement to transform its input resources towards creating its products. Critical competitive priorities of cost, quality, speed, and flexibility are important aspects of operational excellence for manufacturing organisations. This occurrence is a game changer that would help manage productive resources towards reducing costs and delivering incremental value with speed, flexibility, and resilience (Bhattacharya et al. 2020). Manufacturing organisations require the alignment of processes and systems because, unlike service and core supply chains, manufacturing organisations need to integrate process flow and systems to transform outputs (Moscoso and Lago 2017). However, operational pressure exists to organise and modernise manufacturing operating architecture with the impact of global disruption as occasioned by the Ukraine–Russian war and changing global

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market conditions with technological upheavals. For developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, securing this alignment is somewhat challenging for OL due to the dwindling quality of manpower, harsh operating environments, and a dearth of capable leadership skills at local and national levels. Business organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa that want to get the most out of their manufacturing operations should optimise their operating tools and processes along five best practices (Chhabria et al. 2022): 1. Elevate customer centricity by enabling a pull principle for demand-­ driven manufacturing operations. Designing operating infrastructure should be done with market feedback based on customers’ needs. The essence of this pull is a trigger derived from the customer’s need and preference when designing the process, inputs, and outputs in alignment with the market vagaries. 2. Bridge the gap between long-term planning and daily operations is a vital push enabling operations to synchronise sales, marketing, and operations. The essence of this is to establish the need for resources; this is very important for manufacturing operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, where resources are scarce, and to capture relevant market information. Also, it would foster a consensus for integrating sales, operations planning, and strategic and overall organisational planning. 3. Improve information flows between operations and marketing, and sales. Information relating to forecasting and assumptions should be well synchronised between the operations, sales, and market; the essence of this flow is to mitigate the impact of unforeseen constraints, supply hiccups, demand variables, and unconstrained demand. 4. Understand true operational constraints by dissecting plans or forecasts that are feasible or unrealistic. Navigating these constraints to drive visibility and stability in actualising real demand and improve response to relevant stakeholders. The essence of this is to maximise business opportunities that are emerging in Sub-Saharan Africa. 5. Use scenario analysis to elicit what-if questions in balancing demand and supply vagaries in operations. For a continent bedevilled by many human and non-human issues, there is a need to question and re-­ calibrate operational assumptions undergirding planning and

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e­ xecution of value delivery to target customers. For business organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a need to demonstrate previous operations performance with real customer needs. These steps elicit the elegance of optimising, adapting, and changing business environments to achieve business targets. Aside from these, it would also help organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa to minimise the cost to maximum throughput, high yield, and zero environmental effect with its attendant climate impact. Of critical essence, organisations should embrace optimisation to support better, faster planning, and increase value capture and resilience; thus, in a bid to optimise operating systems and process flows, operations leaders should seek to optimise distinct layers and enhance transparency and planning effectiveness in driving manufacturing operations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Supply Chain Management On a broader scale, OL has a critical role in managing the supply chain: it relates to inventory flow and the management of suppliers. As an interconnected relational flow of materials and information, the supply chain may be affected by four types of global forces (Anupindi et al. 2022; Burt et al. 2010; Aghai-Khozani et al. 2022): evolving mutual interdependent landscape, global collaborative relationship undergirding suppliers’ development, repositioning of supply management strategies, and an improved and extended supplier selection process hinged on global imperatives. These forces have implications for operational leadership because these paradigm shifts require new ways of thinking and deploying value-based supply chain networks (Bhattacharya et al. 2020): 1. Business organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa must embrace new forms of collaboration that would leverage suppliers’ skills and capabilities. This new trend will help improve visibility along the supply value chain and mitigate the impact of the bullwhip effect. 2. Equip the supply chain network to imbibe flexibility and responsiveness in redesigning the supply chain flows to be resilient regarding

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trade and geopolitical risks. These aspects of supply chain networks would help business leaders operating within developing and developed countries to be more responsive, speedy, and optimally efficient in delivering value to their customers. Building resilience into supply chain networks and flow is integral to operational leadership. This would foster and embrace new partnerships and collaborations that help leverage suppliers’ skills and capabilities and elicit closer relationships between buyers and suppliers. According to Gutierrez et al. (2020), relationship building among players in a supply chain network is essential for forging improvement and visibility. However, this would be feasible except if business leaders in the Sub-­ Saharan African ecosystem explore some of the measures enumerated next: 1. Scope supply ecosystems to identify suppliers offering unique joint opportunities to create and retain significant value. This is an emergent approach to build a buffer relationship amongst relevant stakeholders to leverage synergy over unplanned disruptions and bottlenecks in the supply networks. 2. Business leaders operating in the supply networks need to co-create a strategic alignment to develop compelling business framework for improving visibility and strategies for mitigating potential future risks. This would provide a bulwark for instances of disruption and streamline the operational tactics. 3. A unique feature of a value chain is that it warehouses some measure of flow; thus, it needs to adopt a methodical and structured approach in defining scope and pace regarding how value creation would be defined and calibrated. This is crucial for value recognition towards driving improvement for operational leaders operating in developed and developing contexts. 4. Cross-functionality is a paradigm shift for emergent supply chain architecture. However, for operations executives to delineate precise value-sharing mechanisms, the cross-functional teams must align incentives and motivational drives. Silo-mentality is no longer a norm but an outlier.

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5. A critical deficit impacting developing countries is the need for more human capabilities and efficient infrastructural frameworks within the supply chain networks. Thus, there is an urgent need for operational leaders to build and develop requisite infrastructural frameworks by investing appropriate resources for this purpose. For emergent technologies to function optimally, there is a functional need for OLs to jointly devote their resources to developing the human capital element and infrastructure that would enable emergent technologies to add value to the supply chain ecosystem. 6. Supply chain requires management infrastructure optimally developed to govern an emergent supply chain model should be focused on the performance, implementation, and tracking of critical key performance indicators. This would help to sustain global best practices and engender supply collaboration into core operational processes on a long-term basis. 7. Communication is essential for improving visibility in the supply chain network. Management infrastructure and operating systems are hinged on a culture built on proactive communication, transparency, consistency, and knowledge sharing to strengthen long-term partnerships. Partnerships are key enablers for a cohesive and responsive supply chain network that would withstand the vagaries of global disruption. 8. Investing and building responsive and sustainable supply chain networks is sacrosanct for OL as a tool kit for navigating global disruptions. Sustainability is the recipe for making world-class organisational capabilities that can stand the test of time.

Barriers Stifling OL in Sub-Saharan Africa OL has a share of barriers stifling its relevance in Sub-Saharan Africa. These barriers have a different dimensional impact; however, some of these critical barriers include the following: • Difficulty in Accessing Emergent Operating Models and Architectures.

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The emergence of novel emergent operating models and architecture is a game changer for business operations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, some operations leaders have been unable to access and deploy these models to improve their operations due largely to a lack of capabilities encompassing the human element and system. The situation has constituted a barrier to improving efficiency and effectiveness regardless of these organisations’ growing demand for products and services. Leveraging these emergent operations would impact the speed of delivery, flexibility, cost, and quality in real time (Didion et al. 2019). • Limited Availability of Data for Process Optimality Data is the new currency for most business organisations globally. Data is about the IoT and processes. However, leveraging data has its limitation if it is inaccessible to an extent; the availability of data drives operations, but most organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to sufficient data platforms, and thus the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations are hampered in delivering value to their business customers within a competitive range. According to Sindhwani et  al. (2009), the operational economics of the global value chain are evolving speedily, and it behoves business organisations to increasingly outsource, redesign business operating systems and models, and re-calibrate their operational assumptions to plug optimally into the global economic equation. Here lies the crux of the emerging operational challenge as the global business world navigates digitalised ecosystems. Kalra et al. (2020) posited that modern operations would attain their full potential by leveraging new emergent technologies that require recalibrating, rewiring, and orchestrating in alignment with a next-generation operating model. This situation would be an integration of digital technologies and operations capabilities that are well-sequenced and geared towards sustainable improvement in profit, customer experience, and cost. Unfolding development is that the increasing recourse by OL to leverage IoT technologies in transforming the economics of manufacturing and the nature of work within plant and service domains can help accelerate value delivery to the market without many logistics implications (Bhattacharya et  al. 2020; Christopher 2016; Jenkins 2017). Hitherto, this ideal situation has become utopian for most business operations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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• Dearth of Human Capabilities The need for more human capabilities to manage intricate aspects of operations is another factor affecting business organisations in Sub-­ Saharan Africa. No matter the extent of automation or digitalisation inherent in any operational architecture, there is always a need for the intervention of the human capital element. Most countries in Sub-­ Saharan Africa are beginning to witness shortfalls in skilled operations expertise; this is even more compounded by the droves of skill migration from developing economies to the developed climes. Human inter-phase with digitalisation and IoT is required for optimal performance of any operational architecture. This gap is becoming a bottleneck for most business operations in Sub-Saharan Africa. The human element plays a significant role in the optimality and implementation of the relevance of business operations (Hendijani 2019). Africa, with a population of about 1.4 billion (Saleh 2022), portends a potential for a beehive of operational excellence in the coming decades, but with the right business leadership and acumen. • Inadequate Infrastructural Framework A reliable and sustainable infrastructural framework is an enabler for optimal operations ecosystem; a shortage or inadequacy of it constitutes a significant barrier to its growth. In developed climes, an excellent infrastructural framework is a backbone for most business operations; in the developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, poor and dilapidated infrastructure has become a bane to operations. Until 2040, over $2 trillion will be required on an annual basis as an investment in infrastructure to drive economic growth; this trend will resonate with a sustainable infrastructure drive that is indicative of climate change, social inclusiveness, technological advancement, a productive and flexible operational matrix (Milani et al. 2021; Jacobides 2019). This trend connotes a huge opportunity for operations management in developing countries, but it constitutes a challenge for operational leadership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Conversely, collaborative operational design, digitisation, calibrated performance indicators, and a joint approach among operations stakeholders should catalyse a transformational infrastructure.

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• Suboptimal Regulatory and Policy frameworks Suboptimal policy reforms and regulatory frameworks have also constituted a barrier or bottleneck to efficient operations in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, though digital technologies are making inroads into the operations ecosystem in some parts of the African continent, poor and inefficient regulatory framework plus policy summersault as a function of ineffective institutions have negatively impacted operations workings in several countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The implication of these incidents has translated into the high operational cost for products and services, thereby making importing goods and services from overseas a viable option.

Operational Leadership in Africa Technology advancement has progressed substantially, but it can only achieve its goal with human intervention. Value creation is an outcome of cohesively integrating the tools, operating system, and human being that create it. Advanced technological solutions fail at times or on some occasions not because of faulty results but due to the inability of human intelligence to comprehend, trust, and accept its output. Technological-­ oriented transformation is hinged on the behavioural aspect of people in an organisation; this trend connotes the assumption that successful technology-­ based transformation takes cognisance of a people-first approach. This trend of reasoning supposes that capability building, support, and leadership role mentoring are effective ways of enabling people to adopt and adapt to new technologies; if business organisations want to foster and entrench new behaviours to stick, a leader needs to provide an enabling environment and incentivise accepted behaviours (Chhabria et al. 2022; Amah 2018; Donohue et al. 2020). Africa needs a huge dose of this leadership and follower integration at this point in time. For most business organisations operating in Sub-Saharan, coupled with the advantage of the huge and young population domicile in this continent, the exigency of OL knows no boundaries. Here, reference is being made to an effective leadership style for efficient operations; most business

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organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa need this leadership type to oversee and manage operations effectively. A large portion of the African population is poor, and there is a need to efficiently transform scarce resources into affordable, high-quality products and services. Affordability as a parameter means that the transformation these scarce resources should be effectively; here lies the importance of OL. In some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, numerous instances abound of business organisations whose operations are poorly managed, giving rise to incidents of poor quality and arbitrary high-cost products and services whose affordability is beyond the reach of a majority of the impoverished populace. Here lies the essence of OL required for an efficient operational system. An effective OL ensures the seamless integration of operating systems, management infrastructure, and capabilities and behaviour of the human capital element. For most business organisations operating in Sub-­Saharan Africa, the OL dilemma can be traced to issues revolving around deficient management infrastructure and suboptimal human capabilities. In this wise, some organisations have had recourse to gamification techniques to engage and boost the performance of employees, but this was only short-lived because technology has its limitation. The human element requires the influence of an OL to drive the optimal flow and performance of an operations ecosystem. Several reasons can be attributed to this situation, among which: 1. Emergent technologies and operating systems do not and cannot generate value add nor can these engage in the transformation of inputs to outputs without the intervention of OL and human capabilities, no matter how little or inconsequential it is; OL intervention is required for solving fundamental operations bottlenecks with an ultimate aim of improving the bottom-line performance or return on investment; 2. Although OL and operations executives may be enthusiastic about the impact of technology, this does not portend or mean that ­organisational staff domicile in the operations unit will be. Novel and new technologies needed to enhance operations management will require that operations employees develop new skills, adopt unique process flow attributes, and adapt new ways of managing and working with evolving operational enclaves and practices. This would happen with the requisite dosage of OL and the right motivation plus incentives.

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Business organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa are in dire need of operations architectures that are effective and efficient. This would only be a wish if only OL to acts courageously and decisive by fostering a culture of excellent OL principles and innovation intertwined with the pivot of technology and scaled on a refined leadership system. Hitherto, technology is accessible more than ever before; the required enabler is a commitment on the part of OL to drive change and the willingness to pay the price. According to Chhabria et al. (2022), organisations with emergent technological prowess did not transform their management systems in the quantum lip; they proactively and thoughtfully diagnosed their current operational state to re-enact their future desired operating model. This school of thought is in sync with the essence of the role of OL.

Key Recommendations OL in Sub-Saharan Africa can use the evolving global disruption as follows: 1. Connect the strategy of operations with the goal and meaningful needs regarding this region’s good quality and affordable products and services. This would require the interaction and synergy of the shared organisational goals and aspirations of leaders in concerned business organisations. 2. Explore innovative ways of creating value by leveraging data and digitalisation to unravel efficient and effective means to produce quality products and services at affordable cost. This action should spur ­incremental impetus to modernise the operations ecosystem in alignment with evolving market dynamics. 3. OL should strive to deliver value efficiently to customers. This goal is only attainable if the operations workforce can emergent technology drive sustainable improvement responsibly about future incremental demand.

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4. Provide opportunities enabling the operational workforce to attain their optimal potential by eliciting succession planning. This approach will curate the operational platform enabling the workforce and leadership to build skills that would aid the adoption of emergent technologies.

Conclusion Global disruption is here and will continue to constitute both a challenge and an opportunity to leverage emergent technologies to drive innovation. It will also occasion an opportunity for business leaders operating in SubSaharan Africa and other developing countries to transition to a next-generation operating model to overcome operational bottlenecks. However, this has implications for OL in Sub-Saharan Africa: business leaders need to move beyond technology but have recourse to a focus on retooling organisational talent and enabling operating systems. This synergy is sustainable if the deficit of skilled workforce is closed and a responsible link exists between management infrastructure and behavioural capabilities. Innovating operating-model transformation requires the leverage of distinct capability-building efforts; this is the essence of OL. OL needs to elicit the viable potentials in tandem with using novel operating systems to revert attrition to attraction. In other words, OL can only unleash a responsible and sustainable culture of innovation if business organisations can leverage emergent technologies to upscale operational excellence.

References Aghai-Khozani, H., S.  Bull, V.  Dilda, L.  Mori, and S.  Reiter. 2022. A More Resilient Supply Chain from Optimised Operations Planning. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/ operations/our-­insights/a-­more-­resilient-­supply-­chain-­from-­optimized­operations-­planning. Amah, O.E. 2018. Employee Engagement in Nigeria: The Role of Leaders and Boundary Variables. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology/SA 44 (0): a1514. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v44i0.1514.

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Anupindi, R., S. Chopra, S.D. Deshmukh, J.A. Van Mieghem, and E. Zemel. 2022. Managing Business Process Flows: Principles of Operations Management. Pearson. Bhattacharya, A., N. Lang, and J. Hemerling. 2020. Beyond Great: Nine Strategies for Thriving Era of Social Tension, Economic Nationalism, and Technological Revolution. Hachette book group, Inc. Burt, D., S. Petcavage, and R. Pinkerton. 2010. Supply Management. McGraw– Hill International Edition. Chhabria, V., K.  Choy, R.  Sood and R.  Whiteman. 2022. New Operations Management Systems for a Digital World. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­insights/ new-­operations-­management-­systems-­for-­a-­digital-­world. Christopher, M. 2016. Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Pearson. Didion, I., P.  Hernandez, A.  Kaushik and K.  Masri. 2019. Operations Management, Reshaped by Robotic Automation. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/ our-­insights/operations-­management-­ reshaped-by-robotic-automation. Donohue, K., O. Özer, and Y.  Zheng. 2020. Behavioural Operations: Past, Present and Future. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 22 (1): 191–202. https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2019.0828. Gutierrez, A., A. Kothari, C. Mazuera, and T. Schoenher. 2020. Taking Supplier Collaboration to the Next Level. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­i nsights/ taking-­supplier-­collaboration-­to-­the-­next-­level. Hendijani, R. 2019. Behavioral Operations Management: A Review of the Field. Journal of Psychological Research 1 (3): 12–30. https://doi.org/10.30564/ jpr.v1i3.736. Jacobides, M.G. 2019. Goodbye to Business as Usual. London Business School Review 30 (2/3): 36–39. Jenkins, A. 2017. Advancing Manufacturing Leadership. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­i nsights/ advancing-­manufacturing-­leadership. Kalra, S., Marque, C., Renaud-Bezot, A., Ribelles, R., and Whiteman, R. 2020. Breaching the Great Wall to Scale. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­insights/ breaching-­the-­great-­wall-­to-­scale.

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Milani, L., D. Mohr, and N. Sandri. 2021. Built to Last: Making Sustainability a Priority in Transport Infrastructure. Travel, Logistics & Infrastructure Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/ industries/travel. Moscoso, P., and A. Lago. 2017. Operations Management for Executives. Realise the Full Potential of Your Organisation. McGraw Hill Education. Saleh, M. 2022. Total Population of Africa 2000 – 2030. https://www.statista. com/statistics/1224168/total-­population-­of-­africa. Sindhwani, S., T. Loo, and G.A. Rodriguez. 2009. Nurturing Business Leaders: Zero-based Proactive Learning Paradigm. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.

6 COVID-19: Leadership Effectiveness and Challenges

Introduction There are two reasons why the book dedicated a whole part to understanding leadership in COVID-19. The first comes from Sowcik’s (2015) and Kellerman’s (2014) works. The first author wrote about the future of leadership in 2015 while looking forward to 2050. The work did not envisage that a significant disruption was to come in 2020. The author stated that prediction of the future should be approached cautiously because of the rapid and unpredictable way issues in leadership change. Kellerman (2014) alluded to the “understanding of the past, present and future context to lead” and the need to “overcome the contextual odds” (p. 316) in search of leadership direction. The past is adequately captured by past authors who wrote about the evolution of leadership thoughts (see Amah 2017; Swart 2008). The present is being discussed by researchers, practitioners, and popular press even though it needs to be adequately articulated. As indicated by Kellerman (2014), these would aid the crafting of another future for leadership enactment for the effectiveness of organisations and people in organisations. The second reason for this chapter is that some authors have written extensively about the changes © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_6

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caused by COVID-19, which disrupted the global economy, work structure, and definition of some organisational measures of success and drivers of competitive advantage (see Dvorak and Wigert 2021; Gallup 2021, 2021). A significant outcome of these changes is what type of leadership will achieve the new organisational parameters for success. The expectation of a link between the COVID-19 disruption and future leadership enactment is derived from how past disruptions affected the future of leadership after the disruption. Two past disruptions were the industrial revolution and the Human Relations Management Thoughts. The former was a landmark in the management of the workplace. It marked the arrival of the factory system and the drive to achieve effectiveness with little human input. The human relations concept ushered in by the Hawthorne studies was another landmark disruption that caused a significant shift in organisational leadership enactment. During this period, the emphasis shifted from process to human element in organisation. The two previous disruptions redefined effectiveness and leadership. COVID-19 has been gauged to cause another disruption in the management of organisations and effectiveness. It is similar to the other disruptions, so understanding what happened and how to handle it will be necessary for crafting a future of leadership post-COVID. Three groups have written extensively on COVID-19 and its effect on leadership and organisation of work. The first class is researchers who either carried out empirical studies to understand better the experience of both leaders and employees in COVID-19 or did an exploratory study of what happened and articulated their thoughts as blogs or other social media outlets. The second class is practitioners who articulated their experiences as they waded through the challenges created by COVID-19. These individuals collated such experiences and derived what they felt were appropriate leadership behaviours. The third class is the popular press which used their journalistic competencies to describe what they found as leadership challenges and what should be done. Since the debate is still ongoing, it will be inappropriate to concentrate on only one class and exclude others. The chapter reviewed information from each class and eventually drew a meaningful conclusion from the analysis of the

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information obtained. Hence, the remainder of the chapter is structured to capture the information from the three classes, and the conclusion draws out what could be inferred from the information.

COVID-19 and Its Associated Issues As of August 15, 2022, the worldwide infection by COVID-19 was 602 million with 6.5 million deaths (WHO 2020). COVID-19 occurred unexpectedly and placed extraordinary challenges on leadership and management of organisational resources. The pandemic posed human and profitability challenges, which would live with the organisation for years to come. For example, COVID-19 caused unprecedented global health challenges, directly and indirectly affecting the socioeconomic and political spheres of nations, organisations, and individuals. Although the challenges of COVID-19 were widely distributed across nations and organisations, the effects on organisations were different. For example, while the revenue of some organisations reduced to a level that they laid off employees at the beginning of the crisis, others were able to manage their resources and kept their employees’ jobs. TEXEM (2021) saw the differential effects on the organisation as arising from the different emphasis organisations placed on strategy and effective leadership, the ability to optimise decision-making in an environment of uncertainty, and effectively crafting and implementing change initiatives. Crisis events like COVID-19 share common characteristics such as “high stakes and urgency, the likelihood of major, imminent losses of life, health, property, heritage, and other values social or private properties” (Howitt and Leonard 2007, p.  1). A significant characteristic of COVID-19 is uncertainty in outcomes arising from the availability of multiple choices of action to address the level of environmental and business uncertainties. While recognising drivers of excellent response to a crisis, the authors maintained that to be effective in managing crisis, leaders must deal with the following challenges of effectiveness in a crisis: low level of the awareness of facts in the environment, lack of detailed procedure for handling the situation, customisation of procedures that may not apply in the pandemic, fault-tolerant execution, lack of skill to address

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the novelty involved, execution of cognitive-driven decision instead of pattern-driven, a flattened structure may be better than tall structure, and leadership style that encourages collaboration instead of authoritydriven. (pp. 3–4)

They concluded that taking care of these challenges would require a form of leadership different from routine emergencies. Leaders in COVID-19 and beyond must address the challenge of navigating the uncertain environment in COVID-19 and beyond. Harrison (2022) advocated that the effectiveness of leaders in such an environment will require the development of a compelling vision, willingness to adapt and be open to the frequent changes in the environment, ability to generate new ideas, and openness to ideas coming from various levels in the organisation, solving problems creatively and inspiring and motivating people. Leaders must be able to provide hope to employees who may be struggling to identify the way out of the challenges of COVID-19. Thus, COVID-19 allowed both organisations and employees to think differently. An organisation must think differently about leadership effectiveness and how work is structured, supervised, and executed. At the same time, employees must reconsider the meaning of work in defining their total self. COVID-19 drove a significant change in remote work structure, giving organisations and employees no choice as to whether to adopt it (Bick et al. 2020; Jamal et al. 2021). They had to adopt remote work or were out of business and employment, respectively. Some employees learned how to work remotely during the crisis and noticed the blurring of the interface between work and family and its high-stress level. Meanwhile, organisations needed more leisure time to plan for various resource changes, processes, and procedures. A significant leadership challenge arising from remote work structure was the reduction of face-­ to-­face interaction between leaders and subordinates. This challenged the quality of the relationship between leaders and subordinates. Reviewing the situation, Wiefferink (2021) concluded that leaders must “develop new virtual leadership practices” (p.  3) to enhance leader-member Exchange (LMX) in virtual work arrangements. The author itemised the leadership practices that could achieve quality LMX as communication; trust; technical competencies; demonstration of confidence; individualised attention; and provision of virtual resources. Thus, to adapt to the

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challenges of COVID-19, there is the need to put off certain beliefs about leadership that do not agree with the reality posed by COVID-19. Vanslyke and Simons (2020) saw COVID-19 as an unprecedented pandemic that could be prolonged and have diverse consequences for an organisation. Hence, the authors advocated that effective leadership that can operate in a prolonged crisis is required. Such leaders require “physical, psychological and emotional fortitude” (p. 1). They have a resilient capacity that can bounce back quickly in any business setback. The authors suggested that resilient leaders have the following qualities: recognise that people may experience decision fatigue, they lead by example but avoid burnout, concentrate on personal and subordinates’ well-being, practice distributed leadership which empowers subordinates; recognise when stress comes in, and share personal experience and possess a high level of emotional intelligence.

COVID-19 Leadership Mourao et al. (2021) discovered through a qualitative study that effective leaders in COVID-19 used hard and soft leadership skills to elicit the collaboration of employees. The hard skill utilised included technological skills, change management skills, instructional and coaching skills, and 360-degree communication. In contrast, the soft skills included team building, work design, negotiation, handling work-life balance, and feedback. COVID-19 presented a situation with a panic crisis, uncertainty, shrinking and redefinition of processes, and anxiety; hence, leadership is critical to short-term survival and building long-term relevance after the crisis (Ibeawuchi et al. 2021). D’Auria and De Smet (2020) itemised things leaders must do in crisis management. These include recognising a crisis; mounting a corresponding response that may be different from the predetermined and tried responses leaders are used to; reconsidering the topdown response, and avoid assumption of stability since leaders face uncertainty with unfamiliar challenges; promoting fast problem-solving under pressure. This calls for leaders to encourage collaboration, transparency, distributed authority, and promotion of psychological safety where individuals feel safe to be part of the solutions, be calm, and adhere to

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bounded optimism without denying the facts of the situation. Effective leaders in COVID-19 knew their organisation’s values and empathised with employees as they went through the uncertainties of the time. The leaders achieved this through communication characterised by being regular, with active listening and collaboration with all organisational participants. In this way, all employees were sent uniform messages (Hartland 2020). Successful leaders in COVID-19 harmonised their short-term survival and long-term relevant strategies. They did not allow the short-term push to conserve funds because of the low revenue to becloud their long-term desire to be relevant after COVID-19. For example, a CEO considered finding ways to fund new efficiencies for existing products, creating new services for customers, and streamlining operations before considering people cutbacks (Ferry 2020). CEOs that took this direction emphasised broad stakeholder benefit instead of the narrow and short-term maximisation of shareholders’ return. Thus, leaders who did not subscribe to the shift from shareholder to stakeholder emphasis were fixated on short-­term survival strategies. Ferry (2020) advocated that resolving the paradox of whether to push or pull is through the desire to do both instead of either/or decision. The author advocated that CEOs must have the courage to deal with the present and to do those things that will ensure future relevance in their industries. Thus, it required leaders to be both “empathetic and executional” (p.  6); they become great when they do not succumb to the temptation to “pull back” but “push forward” (Ferry 2020, p. 8). What COVID-19 exhibited was a shortage that called for pulling on investments, activities, and people. However, great leaders saw the situation as a disruption rather than a longlasting decline in economic activities. Hence, they worked to achieve shortterm survival while building long-term relevance. Great leaders adopted the following steps to manage their situations: “were purposeful, empathetic, remained calm and positive driven, are both action and reflective oriented, inspiring, resilient, aware of their mindsets and are courageous” (p.  14). These leaders developed scenario analysis based on the perception of the depth of effect on their revenue and how long the effect would be. Figure 6.1 indicates the possible scenarios arising from such analysis. The scenario analysis helped the leaders determine what strategies to follow to manage declining revenue. Since both the organisation and employees faced declining resources, the leaders must factor this into developing communications strategies during and after implementing the chosen alternatives.

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>50 Revenue Loss Depth of Effect Minimal Revenue Loss

Pare & Protect

Ride out the storm.

Two Months/ Short-term

91

Restructuring

Get lean.

Duration of Effect

18 Months/ Long-term

Fig. 6.1  Strategies for handling decline in revenue. (Source: Adopted from Ferry (2020, p. 18))

The leaders who led effectively during COVID-19 developed realistic points of view of their organisation and industry and used this information to decide the actions taken. COVID-19 provided the opportunity to reevaluate talent management policies. This involved understanding the organisation’s policies and what they needed to arrive at the optimal level of talent. The following mindset changes were required to leverage the opportunity provided by COVID-19: business is no longer as usual; see the opportunity provided as a way to make changes in their performance measurement criteria to align with the reality of talent management and that virtual work is no longer optional but a part of the work design. The leaders realised that the way career transition is planned and executed, and the after-service offered to those affected by the process are all important in defining the company’s image and the perceptions of the employees left after the process. A leader should be able to pause and assess the situation before acting, and it is not a time of irrational behaviours or practicing trial-and-error leadership actions (Fener and Cevik 2015; Garcia 2006). Other traits of leaders in crisis include: demonstrating empathy and communicating effectively while addressing employees’ concerns. During such periods of uncertainty, various teams should be established that address routine and

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non-routine issues. To be effective, the teams must have sufficient autonomy and authority to operate within the boundary described by the organisation’s values. Leaders in COVID-19 employed leadership behaviours that had been successful. At the same time, some attempted to understand how the pandemic affected their business and used such understanding to craft a leadership style that was effective in their business (Donai 2021). The author recommended knowing your financials and working on your employee engagement. Both are necessary, and one should not be pursued at the disadvantage of the other. Mesaglio (2020) recommended four behaviours that are important in handling COVID-19 challenges: setting up a central list of the priorities that can be locally implemented, avoiding the binary approach to solving problems, and adopting the non-­binary approach. The former has only two options (yes or no), while the latter encourages the search for options. Leaders must practice empathy, honesty, and simplicity and develop success and failure stories to be documented and shared. The quality of the relationship between the leaders and subordinates is critical in COVID-19. This is because the pandemic brought many challenges in the life of individuals and their effectiveness in their roles. It changed employees’ attitudes towards institutions and employers. For example, remote work adopted during the pandemic blurred the interface between work and family and created high stress for employees. How the leader handled the challenges arising from this blurred interface produced employee experience, which shifted what they valued and reshaped their social relationships with their leaders. A study by Amah (2023) identified that only employees who had a segregation orientation were able to manage the increased level of stress arising from the blurring of the interface between work and family during remote working during COVID-19 and that they achieved this only when they had leaders who encouraged the use of segregation orientation. Others who did not get the support had negative experiences and relationships with leaders. With compulsory remote work arose the need to develop strategies for effectively managing remote teams. Effectiveness in managing remote work requires the existence of two mutually supportive factors. These are leadership performance and less hierarchical organisational structure, which decentralised authority and gave job autonomy to employees (Mourao et  al. 2021). This is because the stress and other health and

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social challenges experienced during COVID-19 required unique organisational processes and leadership support (International Labor Organisation 2020; Sandall and Mourao 2020). Using qualitative and quantitative data, Agarwal et al. (2020) recommended some drivers of effectiveness in managing remote teams as communication; setting clear goals; allowing a level of autonomy to employees on how work should be done, and creativity in scheduling meetings and team building exercises. Curphey (2021) reviewed the challenges arising from remote work, such as hybrid work structures, the search for the direction of the new world of work, and mental and physical health assurance, and concluded that future leaders must have skills to support employees, develop talent, and craft a future that would address the concerns of the organisation and employees. The author concluded that future leaders must be able to identify the total needs of employees, give attention to those needs, create agility in the organisation and employees, communicate with empathy, have appropriate policies that can upskill employees, prioritise the mental health of employees, conceptualise the possible future of work and create a work environment to accommodate such flexible, trusting, and empowered employees to take responsibility in their assigned roles. Identification is one half of the solution; such leaders must also walk the talk to ensure the realisation of what was identified. Successful leadership behaviours in COVID-19 were transformational and were able to motivate employees to go the extra mile, manage the different stakeholders (Ainscow 2007; Ainscow et al. 2003; Leithwood 1994; Rees and Caviglioli 2018), encouraged “distributed, collaborative and networked leadership” (Harris 2020, p. 234), created environment that encouraged “compassion, authenticity, and adaptive and democratic” (Ibeawuchi et al. 2021, pp. 17–18). World Economic Forum (2021) advocated five ways leaders can adapt their COVID-19 leadership styles to ensure effectiveness. These are: understand that they need to manage the whole individual who has various other roles outside the work domain that can affect their effectiveness at work, develop a fluid structure that encourages democracy, agility, and versatility, create psychological safety within the organisation that enhances well-being and motivation, practice diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), place emphasis on insight as well as data because reputation, human capital, and social properties may not have data but are equally as

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important as the hard assets with data. IACP (n.d.) stated that leadership during COVID-19 required influencing people using leadership character and competence because organisational participants require strong leadership during unprecedented changes. The group identified ten things that such leaders must do to be effective: identify goals that are important to the success of the organisation; maintain an open line of communication characterised by empathy and honesty; engage in a crucial conversation; recognise employees; be emotionally intelligent; avoid inequity; understand and manage stakeholders; empower team members; encourage organisational and individual agility when managing change process; constantly scan the environment; and make proactive decisions. U.N. Women (2020) acknowledged that despite the organisation’s low number of women leaders, women played a significant role in managing COVID-19 responses. Countries with a female leader were praised for effectively managing and controlling the dangers of COVID-19 (Forman et al. 2020). The leadership style adopted by the women was described as “more collective than individual, more collaborative than competitive, more coaching than commanding” (p. 3). Saidi et al. (2020) identified the crucial skills responsible for the success of women leaders as good coordination; an evidence-based approach to communication; a partnership spirit, and decisive leadership with a clear understanding of the nature of the issues involved. Such leaders monitored and ensured coordinated efforts considering the “socioeconomic and health dimensions” of the pandemic (p. 296). COVID-19 required decisive leaders who value public opinion and craft effective communication to address issues; they are honest and transparent in sharing data available and make quick decisions with available information while willing to fine-tune decisions already made with extra information obtained. The inequality women face in the response leadership role has been identified as responsible for the risk women face in their particular needs. COVID-19 highlighted the importance of leadership in managing organisation, especially in crises (Bundy et al. 2017). This is because, in crises such as COVID-19, with high uncertainty and variability, people expect their leaders to provide guidance, support, direction, and hope. However, Lagowska (2020) stated that during COVID-19, many leaders could not provide what the employees wanted, leading to the loss of respect and support from

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organisational participants. Certain factors were identified as missing in how leadership was enacted during COVID-19. These included the inability to acquire and process information, “act on it and use it to influence others within and outside the organisation” (p. 2), and make effective decisions using imperfect information, and the level of insecurity and uncertainty in COVID-19. The situation called for leaders to have high emotional intelligence, which enables them to manage the perceptions of organisational participants (Sobral et  al. 2020). Recognising that COVID-19 presented challenges and opportunities that point to the need to reconceptualise the enactment of leadership, the authors advocated that future discussions on the effectiveness of leadership should consider the following: the opportunity provided by crisis for the review of the selection and development of leaders; the role of self-leadership and expertise; the use of collective leadership in enhancing effective decision-­making process and leading remote employees. While reviewing the progress made in these areas, Lagowska (2020, p. 4) concluded that the knowledge of how to implement the development of leaders in crisis “remains scanty.” The author concluded that how to prepare and recruit leaders in crisis is an important area of future inquiry into leadership in crisis. Hahang et al. (2022) concentrated their qualitative study on the hospitality industry because they felt effective leadership characteristics in COVID-19 varied according to the industry. They discovered that leadership skills that drove productivity in the hospitality industry as positive thinking, decision-making, flexibility, divergent thinking, trust-building, and communication. Adopting these skills to drive effectiveness in COVID-19 was described as “life and death” (p. 493). Past authors have also described the skills needed to lead in a crisis such as COVID-19 (Abdalla et al. 2022; Hahang et al. 2022; Lai and Wong 2020; Le and Phi, 2021; Nguyen et al. 2022; Wilson 2020). A summary of their recommended skills is listed in Table 6.1. Even though participants in the study listed soft and hard skills, the emphasis was more on soft skills. The results obtained aligned with how the crisis was managed pre-COVID. The differences obtained indicated the elevated nature of the COVID-19 crisis. This confirms that there is no “one right way to handle a crisis, but numerous approaches to avoid pitfalls” (Hahang et  al. 2022, p.  509). What was usual practice for

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Table 6.1  Leadership skills and strategies in crisis Soft skills

Hard skills

Leadership strategies

Communication Decision-making Stress management Positive thinking Flexibility Divergent thinking Trust bulling

Analytical skills Prioritising Organising Planning Budgeting

Managing expenditure Preparing contingency plans Partnering up Making it a learning experience

Source: Adapted from Hahang et al. (2022, p. 500)

business before COVID-19 would not necessarily be normal after COVID-19 (Strack et al. 2020a). Empathy and flexibility are essential in all situations, but they took on heightened importance when facing uncertainty and radical change (Antonopoulou et  al. 2021; LawtonMisra and Pretorius 2021; Wilson and Newstead 2022).

Conclusion The chapter articulated exploratory and empirical studies on leadership effectiveness pre-COVID and during COVID. Similarities were observed in the list of what drove leadership effectiveness in both studies. It was discovered that both soft and hard leadership skills were required for effectiveness in the COVID-19 environment (Hahang et  al. 2022). However, the uncertainty and radical change associated with COVID-19 demanded high soft skills needed for building positive and high-quality LMX (Antonopoulou et  al. 2021; Lawton-Misra and Pretorius 2021; Wilson and Newstead 2022). The challenges of COVID-19 were uniform across organisations, but the level of effect on organisation functioning was different. This was attributed to how effective leaders in each organisation were in modelling the soft skills needed for effectiveness in managing people and other resources during COVID-19. Studies also insinuated the differences in the type of leadership skills needed across gender and industry (Hahang et al. 2022; The Education Commission 2020). However, the critical review showed that leadership skills differed only across pre-COVID and during COVID because of the heightened nature of uncertainty and radical change in the latter.

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What is clear is that COVID-19 has had an effect on multiple areas of the organisation and many aspects of the life of employees. The affected areas are linked as a system, so a system approach to leading was more appropriate. Allen (2020) identified the components of this system as “public health, economic, social, technical, time, emotional, environmental and others” (p. 2). The author recommended that any leadership behaviour that must be used should be able to optimise the entire system and recognise that the system is an open system where external factors affect what happens in the system. This means that leadership that maximises one aspect of the system at the expense of others must be avoided. However, a system-based leadership harmonises the short-term and long-­ term demands to optimise the overall efficiency of people and the organisation. The system approach leadership is enhanced in a data-driven decision-making environment. Data used in decision-making must come from the entire system. In this way, the needs of the various components of the system are factored into any decision on selecting strategies and actions adopted to solve problems identified. Another aspect of leadership that ran throughout the studies is the need to create an environment that encourages organisational and individual agility (Wignaraja 2020). Agility enables leaders to scan their environment; make tough decisions with diverse consequences to the leaders, the organisation, and the employees; and do this quickly. Leaders only need to adopt rational decision-making sometimes. Still, they can make bounded decisions provided they are made with integrity, and equity, preserving the rights and values of all. Leaders must be purpose-driven, not plan-driven, which has limited use for the organisation’s future. Effective COVID-19 leaders challenged what businesses knew of leadership effectiveness before COVID-19. They reviewed what was known about crisis leadership before COVID-19 and moved to a leadership “that acts in the best interest today and tomorrow” (p. 4). Every crisis incorporates what was, what is, and what will be (Ellis 2022). As a crisis, people wonder what the “next normal” for COVID-19 will be. Even though COVID-19 was a challenge to leaders, effective leaders planned for what would be after COVID-19 while battling with what is during COVID-19. Strack et al. (2020b, p. 1) wrote about leadership that involved “head, heart, and hands.” This demonstrates the use of a combination of soft and hard skills in leadership. Thus, the author postulated that the “new normal” would

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require leaders that are both empathetic and capable. Such leaders require their hearts to inspire and empower people, their heads to create a future required for success, and their hands to drive innovation and agile execution capabilities. Such leaders must observe the seven priorities expected in the “next normal,” namely, smart work, physical and mental health, a paradigm shift for talents and skills, a flexible workforce, purpose-driven culture, and the creation of bionic or fluid organisation take can quickly take advantage of opportunities. Some other studies have also projected that COVID-19 changed the direction of leadership (Barhate et al. 2022; Greedy 2021; Dettmann 2020; Richards 2021). Boon (2022) talked about actual and perceived leadership effectiveness. Actual leadership effectiveness, which dominated the era before COVID-19, is measured by the objective results achieved by the leader, while perceived leadership effectiveness which dominated COVID-19, is gauged by how followers see their leaders in terms of the trust, inspiring nature, and confidence in the leader gives. This change was driven by the realisation that collaboration and cooperation are necessary for a crisis era like COVID-19. Creativity, adaptability, resilience, and emotional intelligence drive the perceived leadership style. Creativity helps the leader to identify opportunities in crisis; adaptability makes the leader willing to revisit decisions made when new information calls for such action, resilience makes leaders maintain momentum in times of business bump and elicit the support of followers. Emotional intelligence drives the environment leaders create, which drives followers’ productivity. The drive to establish leadership styles that were effective in COVID-19 and what will happen after COVID-19 was embarked upon by researchers, practitioners, and management associations. For example, Mahapatra (2020) used the experience gained managing nurses during COVID-19 to recommend that leaders in crisis protect people and enhance their well-being, educate and train them in new skills needed in COVID-19, communicate effectively, provide personal and individual encouragement, and reward and recognise those who acted in ways that enhanced the performance of the entire system instead of those with silos mentality. The author stated that taking care of the nurses translated to patient satisfaction. Management consultants utilised data from trained managers to elicit effective leadership styles in COVID-19 (McKenna 2022). The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) engaged

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professionals at the beginning of COVID-19 and in 2021. The difference between the two surveys demonstrated changes in effective leadership styles caused by COVID-19. The professionals interviewed stated the link between the past and the future of work and relationships in work. The CIPD (2020) report conducted during COVID-19 highlighted trust as an essential attribute of leadership in COVID-19. Other attributes identified include the followings: Survival policies and decisions to achieve the same; adopting a social perspective to cater to the need of all; communication with various stakeholders to explain decisions made; innovative skills borrowed from the outside of the organisation; business values were maintained despite leadership styles adopted, and leaders were humane and maintained personal relationships with employees. It was evident from the exploratory and empirical studies performed by practitioners, management consultants, and management associations that COVID-19 was a point of inflexion in leadership theorising. It marked a period of the high emphasis on soft skills because of the importance of collaboration and cooperation in business productivity. This chapter has demonstrated a robust list of what leaders did to be successful in COVID, with what is expected to be the future of leadership. However, the latter were mainly propositions not backed by research findings. Hence, the following chapter has a qualitative study to elicit ideas from diverse organisational participants comprising academicians in leadership theorising, practitioners, human resources specialists, and employees exposed to leadership behaviours. Such a large sample is expected to enrich future leadership styles’ development to ensure effectiveness in managing employees and driving organisational productivity.

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Revista de Administracao Publica 54 (4): 758–781. https://doi.org/10.159 0/0034-­761220200262x. Sowcik, M. 2015. Leadership in 2050. In Leadership in 2050: Critical Challenges, Key Contexts, and Emerging Trends, ed. Sowcik et al. U.K: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Strack, R., Kugel, J., Dyrchs, S., and M. Tauber. 2020a. Leadership in the New Normal. BCG. https://www.bcg.com.publications. Strack, R., Bailey, A., Lovich, D., Baier, J., Messenbock, R., Ruan, F., Dyrchs, S., and A. Kotsis. 2020b. People Priorities for the New Now. BCG. https:// bcg.com.publications. Swart, G. 2008. Africa Leads the Way: The Trends and Triumphs of the Continent’s Leadership Renaissance. African Renaissance 5 (1): 9–17. TEXEM. 2021. Effective Leadership for Sustainable Success. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/promoted/460657-­effective-­leadership-­for-­sustainable-­ success.html. The Education Commission. 2020. Key Lessons on Effective Leadership During COVID-19 and Beyond. https://educationcommission.org/updates/key-­ lessons-­o n-­e ffective-­l eadership-­d uring-­c ovid-­1 9-­a nd-­b eyond/?cn-­ reloaded=1. U.N.  Women. 2020. Covid-19 and Women’s Leadership: From an Effective Response to Building Back Better. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/ files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2020/Policy-­ brief-­COVID-­19-­and-­womens-­leadership-­en.pdf. VanSlyke, S., and A. Simons. 2020. Leadership in the COVID-19 crisis. Control Risks. https://www.controlrisks.com/our-thinking/insights/leadership-in-thecovid-crisis. WHO 2020. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. Wiefferink, B. 2021. Leadership in times of COVID-19: What is required by leaders to effectively manage employees in a virtual work context? Master Thesis at the University of Twente. http://essay.utwente.nl/88320/. Wignaraja, K. 2020. Six Leadership Lessons from Covid-19. https://www.undp. org/blog/six-­leadership-­lessons-­covid-­19. Wilson, S. 2020. Pandemic Leadership: Lessons from New Zealand’s Approach to COVID-19. Leadership 16 (3): 279–293. Wilson, S., and T. Newstead. 2022. The Virtues of Effective Crisis Leadership: What Managers Can Learn from How Women Heads of State Led in the First Wave of COVID-19. Organizational Dynamics 51: 1–11. World Economic Forum, 2021. 5 Ways the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Changing the Role of Leaders. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/5-­ways­the-­pandemic-­is-­changing-­the-­role-­of-­leaders/.

Part III Leadership in the Next Normal Post COVID-19 I

COVID-19 provided an opportunity to review the enactment of the various leadership styles and evaluate their effectiveness. The review justified seeking a reframing of leadership and how to develop leaders. The next normal is a black box that needs to be unravelled to understand how leadership can be effective. Unravelling the unknowns will require a qualitative study to understand the experiences of the various actors in the work domain and what such experience means to leaders in the future. Organisations gauge their effectiveness using economic parameters before the twenty-first century. This definition recognises only shareholders as people whose interest is paramount. The various corporate scandals in the twenty-first century and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have revealed the inadequacy of this definition and the importance of ethics in organisational behaviour. This implies that organisations must consider performance from how their operations affect the well-being of different stakeholders, including how they handle employees. Organisational performance must measure the effects of organisational operations on society and the environment, which necessitates the move from shareholder to stakeholder consideration. This calls for the triple bottom-line measure of organisational effectiveness comprising economic, social, and environmental. Organisations that practice the triple bottom-line performance measure outperform others. Leadership plays a significant role in redefining

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organisational effectiveness and adhering to ethical values in managing employees. The first chapter in this part will describe the result of a qualitative study to draw out the leadership experiences of various actors in the world of work. Chapters 9 and 10 will describe leaders’ role in defining an organization’s productivity in terms of the triple bottom-line measure and ethical standard required to satisfy the demand of the United Nations SDG required for sustainable organisations.

7 Qualitative Study on the Future of Leadership as Seen by Leaders, Practitioners, and Employees

In a volatile and dynamic world, be ready for change. Always look at it as an opportunity to learn rather than resisting it due to fear of failure. (Connor 2020)

Introduction Past studies have supported the findings that the future of work would require leadership driven by soft skills needed to build relationships and collaboration that would eventually drive business performance (Actuaries Institute 2022; Connor 2020; Fallon 2020; Hamstra 2020; Joly 2020; Lagowska et al. 2020; Mitchell n.d.; Whitwell 2021). Unfortunately, the major consulting companies emphasise the transformation of processes and technology and must pay attention to what research findings indicate that organisational participants want (Kochan 2019; PWC Global 2021). COVID-19 repositioned leadership along three directions, namely the direction of leaders developing a pathway to follow, assembling their teams, and leading their teams along the direction; leaders enhance the skills needed for their teams to work along the chosen direction, and they define the priority of the team as part of an entire business operation © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_7

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(Porkodi 2022). However, past studies have identified a gap in pursuing how these leadership directions play out post-COVID (Antonakis 2021; Bleich and Bowless 2021). In crafting the future of leadership post-­ COVID-­19, the recovery period and events in the next normal must be considered. Unfortunately, the business world had expected a short recovery, but events have shown that businesses are out for a prolonged recovery. Even the definition of the next normal is unfolding daily with the discovery of various unknown aspects of the business. Some authors have described the uncertainty surrounding the next normal as “unknown unknown” Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (2020) articulated recovery strategies pointing to the future direction of leadership in recovery and the next normal. The strategies addressed various aspects of the organisational activities, such as inclusiveness, governance and sustainability, finance, and the nature of the organisational structure. The demand for sustainability and good governance calls for leaders to position their organisations toward achieving sustainable efficiency using the triple bottom-line economic, social, and environmental criteria. They are also called to recognise the values and interests of their employees that would drive their well-being. This approach will help leaders identify uncertainties and create awareness among subordinates, create an emotional link with subordinates that enhances the interest in exploring what subordinates are going through, and reskilling them to make them relevant in the future business (Clark 2020). Stephanie (2022) believes that the business world will not return to the pre-COVID situation and that most jobs in the post-COVID would require soft skills. Hence, future leaders must have relevant soft skills to engage employees. A further complexity is how the younger generations perceive the future of work. Though COVID-19 affected all generations in the workforce, it has been insinuated that the millennials were more disproportionately affected. For example, the International Labor Organisation (ILO) report (2020) found that the younger generations were uncertain and fearful of their future career because they experienced higher job loss than older generations (Pardue 2021). However, the young generations found a way to deal with their job loss by becoming micro-entrepreneurs as their primary mean of sustenance (Lufkin 2018). What they learned in this drive will likely shape their preference for stable

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full-time jobs. Thus, the future value proposition of the younger generation may include mental health, work-life balance, flexibility, communication, opportunities such as mentorship and career development, learning, and value alignment. The younger generations are gradually becoming the future leaders that would craft and drive success in post-­ COVID.  The changes mentioned above may indicate what leadership and followership will be in post-COVID. The follow-up sections itemised the findings from both exploratory and empirical studies on the future of leadership post-COVID. This way, a set of questions were developed in the qualitative study involving diverse stakeholders.

F indings from Studies on Post-COVID-19 Work Setting In the future of work, three things must be properly articulated and understood. These are how work should be organised, what an effective leader should be, and what employees’ role is in the world of work (Joy 2020). This is because irrespective of the nature of work adopted, the collaboration and cooperation of employees and leaders will enhance productivity. The authors have theorised that COVID-19 had conflicting effects on the well-being and productivity of workers (Porkodi et  al. 2021; Wodak 2021). The authors also agreed that understanding what and why of the issues involved and actions to be taken post-COVID-19 are areas still unexplored (Beech and Anseel 2020; Chesbrough 2020; Ritter and Pedersen 2020). These authors believed that post-COVID-19 leaders would prepare employees to be relevant post-COVID-19. In pursuit of this, Porkodi (2022) addressed three critical questions whose answers may be relevant in unpacking the black box of post-COVID-19 leadership. These questions are: “How can leaders deal with the phases of recovery from COVID-19?, how to adapt business leadership in a post-­ pandemic world?, and how leaders can support their organisations during Covid-19 and recovery?” (p. 2). The author saw the challenge facing future leaders as adapting to the changes in the new normal driven by

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technology and long-term emphasis, in addition to the emphasis on human values. Thus, the challenges fell under how to futurise and humanise leadership in the post-COVID era. COVID-19 has put much importance on the relationship between employees and the organisation. These relationships fell under the social enterprise concept before COVID-19 but were made more relevant in COVID. During COVID-19, organisations faced two critical decisions which ultimately affected how the leaders pursued relationships with employees. The decisions were to pursue survival strategies only or to do so while considering the relationship with employees who were equally challenged in the uncertain situation. Some organisations should have avoided pursuing either/or strategy and instead recognised that the two decisions are not mutually exclusive but can complement each other. The option selected depended on whether leaders saw the organisation as a family or a work enterprise. The former placed great importance on the relationship with employees, while the latter placed great importance on business figures at the expense of relationships. Before COVID-19, there were diverse beliefs about whether an organisation should be a family, a community, or a business enterprise. For example, the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Special report (2021) quoted a CEO as saying that organisations are business enterprises because being a family makes it difficult to eliminate poor performers. Despite these diverse beliefs, COVID-19 highlighted the importance of the relationship between employees and their organisations. Hence, future leaders must address whether to pursue a survival strategy at the expense of employees’ elevated welfare needs or to pursue both. The former harms relationships while the latter develops them. In search of what this relationship should be, the Deloitte study elicited factors from focused groups that could determine the future level and quality of the relationship between leaders and employees. Talent supply and government impact were very prominent in the factors provided by the focused groups. Government impact captured the government policies and labour laws affecting the organisation and worker stability. These included regulations and other external influences. How they arrived at using government impact and talent supply as bases for categorising relationships may need to be clarified. Still, the categories

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they arrived at provide a good way of gauging the nature and quality of organisational relationships. They arrived at “work is work“ (high government impact and low talent supply), “Work as fashion“ (low government impact and low talent supply), “War between talents“ (low government impact and high talent supply), and “purpose unleashed“ (high government impact and high talent supply). “[W]ork as fashion” is the talent suppliers market since talents have various opportunities in and outside the organisation. With no eternal force on the organisation to act, the relationship becomes reactive depending on the value placed on talent and what competitors are doing. In the “work is work” relationship, the employee is always on the move, and when government policies are favourable, the organisation does not invest much in talent. Hence, the relationship becomes a transactional professional based on what talents invested. The “War between talents” is characterised by enormous talents pursuing limited jobs. Hence, with low government policy on talent, the relationship is impersonal, where employers see talent as easily replaceable and deserving of low investment. The “purpose unleashed” is purpose-­driven, where talent is enormous, and government policy is high. Here employees and organisation see their relationship as based on collaborative action to benefit both. The study concluded that the future could be “work as fashion” because of the global talent shortage and the low government involvement since the government could only do little in talent supply. It suggested that future leadership behaviour will be heavy on soft skills needed to build relationships in a low talent supply environment. Relationships will be critical in the future of leadership, and such relationships may be affected by factors different from those used in the study. If the relationship is essential, then interpersonal skills will take a central role in developing the type of leadership envisaged by the organisations. The study was done across industries; however, there may be a need to do the study within the industry to obtain what category to use. For example, the categorisation may differ for Nigeria’s IT and banking industries. Despite the importance of the relationship identified above, in a report involving surveying CEOs, PWC Strategic Report (2021) reported the following: businesses are planning to grow, change how they operate in a transformational way, limited efficiency goals (which is in people and

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business operations enabled by technology). Unfortunately, their emphasis was on something other than people and building relationships that would drive future performance through people. This result gives the impression that most organisations are planning transformation in process and technology rather than in people management and relationship building. Bradbury (2020) believed that future leadership skills included courage, curiosity, and clarity. The author believes that soft skills (core human skills) will assume more strategic importance in the effectiveness of leadership post-COVID.  The soft skills proposed included the following: openness, empathy, resilience, altruism, collaboration, commitment, and communication (see also Joy 2020). Soft skills help leaders to create a positive organisational climate characterised by psychological safety. This climate makes organisational participants feel secure to make significant contributions and to engage themselves in their assigned roles knowing there would be no adverse effect on their careers. Sinek (2014) stipulated that in crisis management, the organisation’s external environment is usually filled with negative consequences, and only organisations with psychological safety climate will attract the engagement and commitment of employees. This is because such employees see the climate as a social exchange currency offered by the organisation, which they must reciprocate through high involvement. Connectedness is a significant driver of collaboration and cooperation in the new form of work through its reinforcing effects on organisational culture. In the pre-COVID era, connectedness was fostered by a face-to-­ face work structure in a central location. However, during COVID-19, hybrid work became the norm, thus creating a gap in achieving connectedness. This gap must be filled because, in a study, 76% of those surveyed stated that organisational culture is essential in their performance (Gartner for HR., n.d.). A significant challenge in filling this gap is accounting for cultural connectedness in a hybrid workplace and equipping leaders to drive this. To do this, culture must be aligned to the hybrid work environment, and leaders must be equipped with new skills needed to be effective in a hybrid work environment. Human resources

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Table 7.1  Culture connectedness in pre- and post-COVID-19 Pre-COVID-19

Post-COVID-19

Diffuse culture in the office Use physical connection Optimise at macro large group experience

Diffuse culture through work Use emotional proximity Optimise through small group experience

Source: Adapted from Gartner (2022)

professionals agree that upskilling leaders for future roles in a hybrid workplace must consider that leaders must be humane, which points to the importance of soft skills (Gartner 2022). Table 7.1 shows how culture connectedness was achieved pre-COVID and what is required post-COVID. COVID-19 affected the level of trust and credibility of the leaders in the organisation (Bal 2021). This is because some leaders made shortterm decisions that affected the well-being of employees and challenged their trust in leaders and leaders’ credibility. These decisions were implemented with very low or non-existent communication with employees before and after implementing the decisions. Hence, the author stated that an essential role of leaders post-COVID is to redeem the negative image created during COVID-19 through the leadership behaviours they enacted. Thus, leaders must be agile, put people first using humane human resources policies, and build inclusive and connected hybrid teams. Inclusiveness will require leaders to accept and role model the demands of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy and entrench them in the organisation’s culture and values. It will require leaders to think at both the individual employee and team levels when crafting policies and making business decisions. Echebarria (2021, p. 1) saw the next normal as a period of “unknown unknowns” that requires leaders to ask three major questions, namely “what has changed, what will remain, and how will these affect our company?” (p. 1). This reveals the need to harmonise short-term crisis management, medium-term scenarios to reduce uncertainty, and long-term creation of relevance post-COVID to optimise relationships and create valuable collaboration and cooperation among organisational participants (Joly 2020).

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Short-term strategies were necessary to ensure organisations survived the early challenges of COVID-19. However, some leaders over-­ emphasised these plans and made decisions that harmed relationships and long-term relevance. Effective leaders consider the effect of their short-term decisions and find ways to lessen or discuss consequences with the affected people. The medium term saw some leaders learning from the mistake of the short term and communicating effectively to craft strategies for understanding and managing uncertainties. They adopted both operational and human factors involving “decide and act” and motivate and inspire” decisions (Joly 2020, p. 2). The long-term scenario will require behaviours not narrowly focused on immediate goals to the detriment of long-term goals. This will involve raising questions as to the future relevance of the organisation post-COVID. The leadership behaviours of this era would not be contained in any manual or clear guidelines but will be co-created with organisational stakeholders, especially employees (Echebarria 2021). The era will see the realisation of the danger of over-emphasis on what we do now on the long-term relevance of the organisation. Leaders need to leverage the changes in their business environment in evolving their business model and moving into other horizons revealed in the changes to be in sync with what is expected of the organisation. This means that how leaders see challenges will significantly determine their leadership behaviours. Those who see the challenges as opportunities that can make their organisation relevant will be labelled the leaders of the future of work. COVID-19 highlighted the importance of technology in driving the productivity of employees and organisations. Most CEOs interviewed believed that business as usual could not be sustained in the next normal and that the shift to remote work and increased use of technology will be a central component of the future world of work (PWC Report 2020). The report concluded that business leaders must rethink how they “plan, invest, and operate in the future” (p. 1). However, in doing this, careful consideration must be given to the order of importance of technology and the human element in the next normal. This order must be defined and subscribed to by leaders in light of discovering the critical role of

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employees in future organisational productivity. Unfortunately, the direction taken by the popular press and exploratory writers has been in understanding technology rather than in the human aspect of the organisation (see Boland et  al. 2020; Kochan 2019; Dhaliwal 2020; MIT 2020). Hence, to understand the future of work and leadership, a comprehensive approach involving a review of all areas of thought and contributions is required. This is comparable to adopting a system view of the challenge to arrive at a solution that considers the roles of the various stakeholders in the future of work and leadership. The search for the future of leadership in the next normal will include the redefinition of leadership, a new understanding of the purpose of leadership, and the review and crafting of new ways of learning and teaching leadership (Lencioni 2020; Morgan 2020; Whitewell 2021). The definition and understanding of leadership are linked because it is how you understand leadership that dictates leadership mindset and how leadership is ultimately defined (Amah 2019; Dweck 2006; The Arbinger Institute 2016). Leadership development must account for the how and what to teach during leadership development. The entire leadership issue in the next normal is still exploratory. Hence, a qualitative methodology aimed at eliciting the future of leadership from various organisational participants’ perspectives will be a better way to craft the understanding, definition, enacting, and development of leadership. If researchers do well in understanding and defining leadership, the development of leaders will be better than pre-COVID era (Sheffield n.d). Leaders’ future development aims to achieve a high level of sustainable leadership behavioural change that can drive effectiveness in the next normal. Unfortunately, the current mindset of consultants involved in training leaders is focused on change in implementing learning rather than on the sustainability of the expected behavioural changes. Recognising this, Sheffield (n.d) stated that leadership development would only be given priority if the development of leaders follows the path of sustaining behavioural change. Therefore, a holistic approach is required to understand, define, and develop leaders to achieve sustainable behavioural change that will align with the requirements of the next normal.

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Conclusion COVID-19 gave rise to two terms: the new normal and the next normal. Businesses had expected that COVID would disappear the way it came so that the next normal would start immediately. Unfortunately, COVID has prolonged, and the end cannot be predicted. Therefore, the world is witnessing an extended recovery period before the next normal. The world had come to terms with the fact that it would live with the pandemic for an extended period. Nations and organisations have developed coping tendencies aimed at living with the pandemic. This has placed another level of complexity on determining the future of work in the next normal. What the future is in the next normal is, therefore, still a black box yet to be fully understood. Predictions of success factors have been made through exploratory and empirical studies. Even the popular press, practitioners, management trainers, and consultants are not excluded from the predictions. The predictions recommended fall into hard and soft skills. However, most predictions recommend that soft skills would take high importance in driving leadership effectiveness in the recovery and next normal phases. Studies have identified that trust, credibility, communication, humane management skills, and empathy are significant drivers of the relationship between leaders and employees, collaboration, and coordination required to enhance the productivity of employees and the entire organisation. It was also discovered that leadership should guarantee the psychological safety needed for employees to make contributions without fear of negative consequences. Future leaders must also pursue sustainability, inclusiveness, governance, and ethics. Ethics is expected to take on elevated meaning since how leaders treat employees will form a part of ethics in leadership behaviour. How leaders handle other resources has been placed within the ethical rule. However, COVID-19 shows that ethical and sustainability considerations must include how they treat the best resources and human beings. The questions that are drawn from the reviews in this chapter that would be used for the qualitative studies include the following:

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• What are the qualities of leaders that can help their organisation to pass through the recovery phase of COVID-19 successfully? • What qualities of leaders will drive high productivity in the next normal after COVID-19? • Describe the leaders that can bring out the best in employees in the future post-COVID-19. • What are leaders doing to alleviate the challenges that employees face in the future of work? These were used for the qualitative study involving academics, practitioners, and employees.

Method and Results A convenient sampling technique was used to select participants who are scholars in the study of leadership, practitioner leaders, and employees. A qualitative method was used to elicit their contributions to the four questions. Five leadership scholars, eight practicing leaders, and ten employees submitted their comments. NVivo 12 was used to analyse the data. Leadership skills coded are categorised as soft and hard skills. The leadership behaviours are in Fig. 7.1, and the frequencies of the codes received are in Fig. 7.2. Soft skills had the highest occurrence at 70%, while hard skills at 14.9%. The items in the soft skill are categorised as caring for employees and creating a positive, engaging climate. In contrast, components of the hard skills are driving process efficiency and allowing remote work. Two participants mentioned the leader’s spirituality as necessary for managing people effectively. The skills discovered are similar to what was discovered by other studies.

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O. E. Amah and M. Ogah Soft Skill: Caring for Employees Encouraging the work force Interested in employee capacity to perform Interest in employee weelbeing Show understanding in employee issues Show empathy Trust employees Collaborate with employees Engages employees as stakeholders Believe in employees Rewards employees Praise employee Fenuinely listen to them Puts employees first & Pray

Hard Skill: Process Efficiency Positive outlook of the future High performance process Strategic planning Proactive leadership

Post Covid-19 Proposed Leadershhip Behavior Soft Skill: Creating engaging work

Hard Skill: Work Structure Encouraging employees working remotely Encourage Flixible work hours Embracing hybrid work system

climate Create creative climate Encourages optimism Encourages facing challenges Stargared work hours Collaborative work climate Adaptability Agility Emotional intelligence Encourages employee voice Flexible woork climate Delegates Allows discipline and drive Allows mistakes as means of learning Encourages solution of challenges gradual

Fig. 7.1  Proposed post-COVID-19 leadership behaviours. (Source: Author)

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Fig. 7.2  Graph of coding from the study. (Source: Author)

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Pardue, L. 2021. Class of 2021 Job Prospects in the COVID Economy. Company News. https://gusto.com/company-­news/class-­of-­2021-­job-­prospects-­in-­the-­ covid-­economy. Porkodi, S. 2022. Leadership Approaches for Post-Covid Recovery: A Systematic Literature Review. European Journal of Business and Management Research 7 (3): 1–11. Porkodi, S., A.M.  Al-Zawaidi, A.M.  Al-Muharbi, L.M.  Al-Sarmi, H.M.  Al Shibli, and W.N. Al Rahbi. 2021. Impact of Covid-19 HRM Challenges on HRM Practices for Routing the Post Pandemic: A Study with Special Reference to Oil & Gas Companies in Oman. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal 8 (9): 239–246. PWC Global. 2021. Humanity, Innovation and Radical Progress in the Post-­ COVID World. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/reinventing-­the-­future/ take-­on-­tomorrow/covid-­disparity-­evaluation.html. PWC Report. 2020. CEOs: Post-Covid Changes Are Permanent and There Are More to Come. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-­room/press-­releases/ 2020/ceo-­survey-­covid-­update.html. Ritter, T., and C.L. Pedersen. 2020. Analyzing the Impact of the Coronavirus Crisis on Business Models. Industrial Marketing Management 88: 214–224. Sheffield. n.d. The future of leadership development in the post Covid-19. Era. https://sheffield.co.nz/Insights/ID/178/categoryId/1/The-­Future-­of-­Leadership-­ Development-­in-­the-­Post-­COVID-­19-­Era. Sinek, S. 2014. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. Portfolio. Stephanie, L. 2022. 9 Skills You’ll Need to Succeed in a Post-Coronavirus Business World. Top Universities. https://www.topuniversities.com/student-­ info/careers-­a dvice/9-­s kills-­y oull-­n eed-­s ucceed-­p ost-­c oronavirus­business-­world. Strategy and Part of PWC Network. 2021. Great Expectations: Global Executives Respond to Business Disruption. https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/gx/en/ unique-­s olutions/fit-­f or-­g rowth/pwc-­2 021-­g lobal-­r estructuring-­a nd-­ transformation-­survey.pdf. The Arbinger Institute. 2016. The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves. Barrett Koehler Publishers, Inc. Whitewell, G. 2021. Resetting the Leadership Agenda Post-COVID-19. AACSB. https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/articles/2021/01/resetting-­the-­ leadership-­agenda-­post-­covid-­19.

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Whitwell, G. 2021. Resetting the Leadership Agenda Post-COVID-19. Sydney Business Insight. https://sbi.sydney.edu.au/resetting-­the-­leadership-­agenda-­ post-­covid-­19/. Wodak, R. 2021. Crisis Communication and Crisis Management During COVID-19. Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs 11 (3): 329–353.

8 Leadership and Sustainability Development Goals: Triple Bottom-Line Measure of Organisational Effectiveness

The process of completing a Triple Bottom Line Report draws your attention to important areas of your business that you may have missed using traditional measurement criteria. (Bonnici 2022, p. 2) We’ve been able to write our first Triple Bottom Line report and use it internally to generate increased commitment throughout the business. We now have groups working actively in each of our four sites on the goals we’ve set. (Roughan 2022, p. 2)

Introduction The opening quotations show that organisations that implement the triple bottom-line (TBL) measures discover hidden facts about themselves that were not open before the adoption of the measure. The concept of triple bottom-line (TBL) was introduced in management by Elkington (1997), but the idea of sustainability and sustainable development came from the works of George (2009) and Brundtland (1987). TBL measures © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_8

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the organisation’s effectiveness in terms of economic, social, and environmental factors. The economic factor captures the influence of an organisation on the economic system (Elkington 1997). Organisations that pursue only this factor are interested in creating value for shareholders, even at the expense of other stakeholders. Social factor captures organisations’ beneficial and fair business practices for labour, human capital development, and community. It pursues stakeholders’ values and gives back to the community in which the organisations operate. Organisations pay an economical price when they neglect the responsibility to the social actors (Alhaddi 2015; Dhiman 2008). Environmental factor captures organisational actions to preserve the environment for future generations (Goel 2010). The debate about the role of business has long been polarised into two groups. The first group, led by the thinking of Friedman (1970), is that the business of an enterprise is to maximise shareholders’ value. So the only measures of effectiveness are the economic criteria. The second group was influenced by the work of Elkington (1997) to the effect that business exists to maximise stakeholders’ value. Therefore, the TBL measures of economic, environmental, and social criteria guarantee sustainable organisation performance. The stand of this group was enhanced by the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDG). Evidence shows that organisations that follow the TBL measures have sustainable growth and profitability (Amah and Oyetunde 2019; Coomber 2014). The move to the stakeholder perspective justifies the TBL measure because organisations do not exist in a vacuum but are contextually situated. Ethical considerations demand that organisations make valuable contributions to preserving life in the context of their operation. This demand goes beyond satisfying legal requirements to making ethics and corporate citizenship of an organisation’s strategic issues. Hence, the adoption of TBL becomes a moral demand (Epstein and Birchard 1999; Giang et al. 2022). Ethical requirement necessitates that organisations pay attention to the effects of their operations on the well-being of society and the environment, and to take action to build a positive reputation as good corporate citizens. There have been several debates on the relationship between TBL and sustainability. Some authors use the terms synonymously to mean the

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same thing (see Alhaddi 2015), while others assume they mean either social or environmental or both (Frame and Newton 2007; Iles 2008; McDonald and Oates 2006; Yan et al. 2009; Bibri 2008). However, after reviewing the use of TBL and sustainability in past studies, Alhaddi (2015) concluded that there needed to be a consistent usage of the terms and that researchers must clearly state their preferred assumption of the relationship between them. The book chapter aligns with the belief that purpose of adopting the TBL is to achieve sustainability in a business (Giang et al. 2022; Rogers and Hudson 2011). Hence, sustainability is the outcome of using the three components of TBL in gauging the effectiveness of an organisation (Collins et  al. 2007; Marcus and Fremeth 2009). The path followed in this chapter agrees with the meaning of sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987, p. 43), and this is gauged by the use of TBL measures. Another clarification is that TBL is called economic, environmental, and social (Giang et al. 2022) or profit, planet, and people (Elkington 1997). The two descriptions represent TBL and are used interchangeably. Since its introduction, the TBL measures of organisational performance have been very controversial, with groups in support and some against its adoption (see Elkington 1997; Friedman 1970). One of the reasons advanced by those against its use is the difficulty in designing an objective measure of the components of social and environmental measures. Past researchers have attempted to develop usable measures for the TBL (see Furnish et  al. 2013; Gross 2015; Slaper and Hall 2011). However, these measures are yet to command wide acceptance. Most of those who question these measures approach the issue from a legal perspective. Despite the rejection of the TBL by some organisations, there is abundant evidence that investment in sustainability projects by organisations has increased and that regulatory bodies worldwide are either demanding the same from organisations or developing a procedure to implement it (MorningStar 2022; US Security & Exchange Commission 2021). As stated in the opening quotations, implementing TBL has a positive effect on the organisation’s overall performance and improves its reputation and acceptance by stakeholders.

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This chapter covers two broad areas. The first is to provide evidence of why organisations must default to TBL reporting. It is assumed that it would be a matter of time before most organisations see the adoption of TBL as a way of business to enhance their reputation and build social relevance in their environment of operation. Hence, the chapter approached the TBL issue from a moral perspective since organisations owe their stakeholders the obligation of ensuring the sustainability of the well-being of people living now and those for the future. Organisations must preserve the conditions of society and the environment such that the present and future generations are not disadvantaged. Though developed for nations, the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals see organisations as partners and stakeholders in achieving the goals (United Nations 2015). The second area covered in the chapter is the review of leaders’ role in driving the decision to align with the sustainability goals, develop a plan, and implement the same. The chapter did not develop a new measure for TBL and did not debate the applicability of the already developed measures. It assumed that when a leader is willing to be ethical in positioning the organisation’s process and action for sustainability, the organisation will look for effective measures of the TBL components. Only leaders who want to avoid being part of the sustainability drive will look for excuses in measures and the real purpose of business (a debate that has gone beyond the relevance of TBL to how it must be implemented). Commenting on the role of leaders in crafting and implementing TBL policy Prasad (2021, p. 2) stated: Leaders need to examine their own beliefs and values and align them with those of the organization. They need to bring their empowering values into the organization while neutralizing their own delimiting beliefs. They also need to identify the same in their people and absorb what is good and block what is bad.

Thus, the author stated that leaders have beliefs and values that they bring into organisational policies and ensure organisational participants follow their direction. As it is in other aspects of the organisation’s process, so it is in implementing TBL policy. This assertion was magnified by the work of Groom (2018) that the structure set up by leaders is the

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primary driver of whether TBL is adopted and implemented. The rest of the chapter reviewed the components of TBL, studies on the implementation of TBL and concluded with the paradigm shift required to follow the path of sustainability using the TBL measures.

 he United Nations Sustainability T Development Goals and the Triple Bottom-Line Measures of Organisational Effectiveness. In 2015, the United Nations Members States articulated the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development (United nations 2015). The UN declared the primary purpose of this agenda as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people, and the planet, now and into the future” (p. 3). In achieving this, the members articulated 17 developmental goals, which, when implemented, will lead to the sustainable development of all nations in 2030. In mandating and articulating these goals, the member states stated that the responsibility for articulating the demands of the goals and implementing them rested on countries and all stakeholders. However, the document calls for countries and stakeholders to act collaboratively to achieve the goals. This declaration makes it mandatory for organisations as essential stakeholders to pursue these goals while making economic profit. In clarifying what the involvement of organisations should be in the drive for sustainability, the UN document stated that organisations must operate sustainably to guarantee the well-being of people and the planet now and in the future. As envisaged in the document, an appropriate definition of sustainability is “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987, p. 43). John Elkington separated the word sustainability into “sustain” and “ability” to reflect the need to ensure that productivity and well-being are sustained in the present and future and that there is the ability to sustain them over time. According to Simonian (2021) this explanation makes it clear that achieving the TBL is a significant component of this. Thus, for sustainability to be guaranteed, there is a need to

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move away from measuring effectiveness using economic terms that guarantee only profit and shareholders’ value creation to all-encompassing TBL measures. Therefore, organisations must emphasise the TBL measures and incorporate them into their values to pursue developmental goals. A second aspect of the goals is the role of ethics in business operations. Ethics in business must go beyond the usual handling of resources used for making a profit to include how leaders handle the affairs of the people, planet, and community they operate. The current chapter discussed the sustainability goals regarding leaders’ role in instituting the TBL measures and ensuring they are followed as required by the Sustainability Development Goals. The issue of ethics, sustainability, and leadership roles will be discussed in Chap. 9. The following sustainability goals have relevance to the operations of the organisation: • Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages. • Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. • Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. • Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. • Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. • Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.

 he Triple Bottom-Line Measures T and Advantages Although the idea of what sustainability means has been controversial, the concept has attracted organisational productivity researchers’ attention in the past (Glavič and Lukman 2007; Neely et al. 2002). Traditional businesses gauge their performance using economic criteria for some reasons. However, increasingly organisations have been called to build social licence through improving their reputation and gauging their performance using TBL measures of the environment, social and economic.

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The adoption of the TBL reporting was left at organisations’ discretion as they considered the contributions of sustainability to their economic criteria. The rejection of the TBL reporting was based on difficulty in measurement, lack of perceived link with economic criteria, not practicable, and because it is a distraction from the role of the business (Perez et al. 2022). Organisations adopting the TBL reporting allude to how sustainability decreases operating costs, improves risk identification and management, and improves reputation, which translates to future value creation, attracting and retaining employees, learning and innovation, and providing structures for social and environmental initiatives. Groom (2018) studied why the TBL concept was not adopted in museums and concluded that the main issue was the lack of structure that aids the adoption of TBL reporting. The structures involve a regulatory, voluntary framework that drives the adoption of TBL reporting. The author concluded that the influence of leaders was instrumental in adopting TBL in the organisation that adopted it. The executive board was considered necessary for support but not in driving and initiating adopting of the TBL policy. One finding that magnifies the role of leadership was that some museums did not adopt TBL even when external regulations existed. In contrast, others adopted TBL even when such external regulation did not exist. Even though external regulations were necessary, the sufficient condition for the adoption of TBL reporting was the perception of leaders towards sustainability. Elkington (1997) argued that it was time for organisations to move from only the corporate profit mindset towards TBL measures involving environmental, social, and economic measures. The author further argued that only an organisation with TBL measures accurately captures its business’s total value and effect on its environment. What the author advocated was a paradigm shift that cut across seven areas of an organisation, as shown in Table 8.1. The author articulated seven blind spots of leaders that may hinder the adoption of the sustainability paradigm shift. These included seeing sustainability as a new demand instead of seeing it as existing in the history of humans and business; that business is in operation to create economic values and not worry about social and ethical values; that operating below the consciousness of people will allow the company to avoid the demands

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Table 8.1  Paradigm shift due to the introduction of TBL reporting Drivers

Old paradigm

New paradigm

Markets Values

Compliance Hard (economic figures) Closed (inferred)

Competition Soft (additional values)

Communication Partnership Life cycle technology Time Corporate governance

Open (wider stakeholder analysis) Subvention Symbiotics (win-win) Focused on production Focused on functions Wide Longer Exclusive Inclusive

Source: Adopted from Elkington (1997, p. 3)

of sustainability; that the business of organisations is at the factory and beyond this, issues can be resolved without the involvement of the organisations; that organisation can isolate its self from collaboration with society in handling challenges; and to see the world from their perspectives and not in the perspective of stakeholders. The seven paradigms, coupled with the blind spots, reveal that businesses can no longer play the ostrich principle of hiding under to avoid exposure. Whether organisations recognise the existence of stakeholders or not, stakeholders are making demands on organisations either directly or through advocacy groups. Thus, leaders must factor in the interest of stakeholders in the running of their organisations. For example, the oil industry in Nigeria enjoyed a relatively calm and secure environment in the early 1980s, with little or no demand from various stakeholders. Profit became the means of evaluating the performance of the companies. The industry did not educate itself to determine what was required to maintain a positive reputation and relationship with other stakeholders. The interest of the entire industry was on what they could give the government in return for what they wanted. They felt the only stakeholder they had was the government. The other stakeholders have educated themselves to know their rights and are now making demands on the companies. They even use unconventional means to ensure their demands are considered and met. The level of insecurity increased, and according to Jeremiah (2019), the Nigerian National Oil company reported that despite the N350 billion security budget,

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operating in the region was still very unsafe. TBL reporting enhances values and helps attract and retain high-performing employees (Pimplapure et al. 2020). One major obstacle in adopting the TBL reporting is how to make the social and environmental measures as objective as the economic measures. This has made so many organisations default to only economic measures which are readily available. However, Giang et al. (2022) studied the role of the availability of measurement tools for TBL, how competitors apply TBL, the adoption of resources needed for TBL implementation, and leadership competency and adoption of relevant technology for TBL in driving the application of TBL and achieving sustainability in business. The authors found out that only leadership competency, adoption of relevant technology, and adoption of resources needed for TBL implementation affected the adoption of TBL by organisations. Ajiake (2015) found out that the following factors affected the adoption of TBL in public organisations: foundational behaviours that encourage social responsibility thinking, such as unquestionable leadership support, allocation of resources to fund the process, and dynamic stakeholder-driven performance metrics and reporting. However, the author saw the purpose of implementing TBL in private organisations as curry reputation or differentially applied across the organisations. Hence, in the private sector, the total effects of an organisation’s operations on social and environmental contexts cannot be established (de Lancer Julnes and Holzer 2001). An additional unresolved issue is how to incorporate the measures of TBL into the organisational measure of effectiveness (Veleva and Ellenbecker 2001; Singh et  al. 2012). How to operationalise the TBL is not covered in this chapter; however, those interested should consult the article by Amah and Oyetunde (2019). A company with a sustainability goal outperforms other organisations because it accounts for the TBL in its operation. For example, organisations that operate the TBL measures identify opportunities to cut costs and innovate (Pimplapure et al. 2020). The decision for an organisation to adopt the TBL reporting is taken at the top leadership level. This is because only leaders at this level can abandon pursuing economic valuation when such action is at the expense of social, economic, and environmental measures.

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Pimplapure et al. (2020) suggested that organisations do not have to optimise the three TBL measures and that preference should be given to the economic measures since economic profits pay for investments in the social and environmental domains. The problem with this point of view is that it places too much power on the leaders to determine what to do, and invariably there is a high temptation to over-emphasise the economic measures at the disadvantage of the others. The sustainability goals assumed that equal emphasis should be given to the three measures under the TBL reporting. This is because organisations are encouraged to move from over-emphasising shareholders’ returns driven by economic measures and move to stakeholders’ interests based on the TBL reporting (Hubbard 2009; Smith and Sharicz 2011; Lacy et al. 2010). The TBL approach to measuring effectiveness that incorporates the three Ps of profit, people, and planet measures has been advocated as an excellent way of measuring sustainability required by the UN sustainability goals (Deng 2015; Harris et  al. 2001; Colbert and Kurucz 2007). TBL enables organisations to meet their economic, environmental, and social responsibilities and enhance their image among their stakeholders (Elkington 1997). Performance management is a significant role of leaders to control employees and organisational productivity (Olson and Slater 2002). Leaders set what constitutes organisational effectiveness and what to measure and reward. This points to the significant role of leadership in positioning organisations to drive sustainability. When the leader pursues the TBL measures and institutionalises them, the organisation becomes a driver of sustainability, and all organisational participants will align accordingly. Thus, what the leader installs and drives the organisation and all its participants will adopt. The economic measures capture operating income, market share, labour efficiency, and time to market (Henri 2009). TBL indicators include environmental compliance, diversity, inclusion and equity, and labour/management relationship (Global Reporting Initiative 2022). Inconclusive results have been found in past studies on the relationship between each TBL measure (Breetzke 2021; Dutta 2012; Ifeanyi et al. 2020). However, the fact that stakeholders demand that organisations show concern in the three criteria to achieve sustainability means that leaders must move beyond profit motives to the needs of stakeholders.

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However, other studies have established that there is a positive relationship between the use of social and environmental criteria, but such was not found between the use of economic criteria and the former two criteria (Andic 2016; Hourneaux et al. 2014, 2018; Ramalho et al. 2016). These findings imply that organisations that adopt social criteria are likely to adopt environmental criteria. However, it is not evident that those that adopt economic criteria will adopt social and environmental criteria. These are not decisions by employees because leadership is responsible for determining business effectiveness and the criteria for gauging it.

The Adoption of TBL Measures Andic (2016) indicated that the slow pace in adopting the TBL measures arose from the difficulty in identifying and documenting factors for social and environmental components and the reluctance of organisations to embrace sustainability as a strategic option in their operations. The author coined the phrase “sustainability entitlement” (p. ii) to represent the industry in which sustainability is considered strategic and essential for competitiveness. Past researchers resolved the first challenge of measuring the TBL measures (see Amah and Oyetunde 2019; Andic 2016; Hourneaux et al. 2018). This book chapter follows the premise that the reason for the slow adoption of the TBL reporting and adoption of sustainability strategy lies in the actions and mindset of leaders in the organisation. Leaders whose mindset is shareholder return will view organisational effectiveness from the angle of economic measures, and their actions will reinforce this mindset. However, those with a stakeholder’s return mindset will define effectiveness broadly to include the TBL measures and see sustainability as strategic to their survival in business (Andic 2016; Toms 2002). According to the stakeholder theory, organisations that adopt the stakeholders’ view of business would adopt the TBL performance measures because they know that stakeholders would want to gauge the organisation’s reputation, characteristics, and trustworthiness from their TBL reporting (Gabbioneta et al. 2007). Two theories, namely, the agenda-setting and legitimacy theories, explain why some organisations adopt TBL reporting and others do not

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(Bebbington et al. 2008; Deegan et al. 2002). The agenda-setting theory postulates that what the public desires and which is given coverage in media will occupy people’s attention and drive what the organisations report (McCombs and Reynolds 2002). Thus, the emphasis placed on TBL reporting by stakeholders and media will drive how the reputation of organisations is measured and what criteria to use in gauging reputation. The legitimacy theory posited that for an organisation to exist and act in line with the public’s expectations, it must report results that align with such expectations (O’Donovan 2000). Based on these theories, organisations that care about their short-term survival and long-term relevance will emphasise the stakeholders’ model of the firm and will embrace the TBL reporting. However, organisations that care only about their short-term survival and gain will adopt the shareholders model, care less about other TBL measures, and concentrate on only the economic measures that give the firm the desired short-term advantage. These are decisions that are approved and driven by leadership actions. What organisational leaders value will be the root of their decisions and what they allow. For example, organisational values are created by leaders, and their ingrained values are reflected in the values they espouse, create, support, and role model. Prasad (2021, p.  2) states that organisations misbehave because there is a “wide disconnect between the values and beliefs of the organisation and the values and beliefs of the leaders.” Values and beliefs drive what individuals accept and encourage. When leaders hold the values and beliefs of the organisation, they assume a more dominating influence in how the organisation crafts and enforces its beliefs and values. For example, when the values and beliefs of leaders align with sustainability and emphasise stakeholders‘ interest, such will encourage the adoption of sustainability and only encourage actions from organisational participants that reinforce sustainability. Every organisation must have favourable social licence arising from their contributions to society beyond economic contribution (Perez et al. 2022). This is because the issues of social, environmental, and economic measures of effectiveness have taken a central position in the organisation’s relevance in sustainability goals. Worldwide regulatory bodies either have adopted the TBL measures or are seriously considering making them mandatory (Governance & Sustainability Institute 2021; USA

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Security & Exchange Commission 2021). The increased interest in sustainability is also evident from the investment pattern in sustainability-­ related projects (see Morningstar 2022). For example, according to the report, the global sustainability fund grew from $40 billion in 2019 to $180 billion in early 2021 but declined during COVID-19.

The Future of TBL Adoption in Organisations Past authors have made valuable contributions and insights into how CEOs and Boards perceive the future of TBL adoption in their organisations. For example, Porter and van der Linde (1995) saw a tradeoff between ecology and economy in the decisions of the CEOs and Boards when discussing the adoption of TBL reporting. The authors recommended that rather than resist emphasis on sustainability; time should be spent reviewing the future of their organisations in adapting to sustainability drive. Miller (2020) posited that sustainability is now an actual demand that addresses the demand of people and contributes to the firm’s success. The author believed that organisations have been responsible for most of the adverse effects of sustainability and should be at the forefront of the drive to achieve genuine sustainability, not through legal adherence but by making it a part of their strategy and value. Innovative companies have discovered that they can do well by doing good (Chladek 2019). The author highlighted that when included in an organisation’s strategy, sustainability achieves climate change, removes all forms of inequality, and addresses human rights and injustice in using natural resources and achieving productivity. Sustainability does not reduce economic value but adds to the bottom line and improves the internal and external relationship with stakeholders (Chladek 2019; Cote 2021). The benefits of TBL performance measures in organisations include the protection of the brand and reduction of risks; when organisations have a purpose that people value, it serves as a source of competitive advantage and sustainable marketing which is a significant demand made by modern consumers (Gomis and Sodji 2021; Naz et  al. 2016). The increased interest in organisations behaving sustainably affects purchase decisions made by customers (Amah and Jones 2022). The authors

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alluded to customers’ increased traffic in the sustainability software before making purchase decisions as a support to increase customer demand for organisations to behave sustainably to retain patronage from existing customers. Individuals are forming pressure groups that document the unsustainable behaviour of organisations from product design, production process, marketing, and after-sales and use such information to drive their behaviour towards offending organisations (Hance 2010; Kilvert 2018; Nelsen 2017; Rainforest Action Network 2015). Nelsen (2017) discovered that about 48% of consumers surveyed would change their purchase decisions to reduce the impact of organisation’s process on the environment. Werft (2015) referred to sustainable leaders as leaders who craft the strategy of their organisations to ensure that they manage economic, social, and environmental impact and report such measures as a basis for performance measurement. Such leaders can effectively harmonise short-term survival and long-term relevance goals to minimise the adverse effects of their operations on society and the environment. Sustainable leaders are crucial to handling poverty and inequity and have the courage to pursue sustainability even at personal career effect. Because of the increased awareness and demand on organisations to behave sustainably, leaders should consider the negative consequences of non-­ adherence to TBL measures, such as destruction of the environment, exploitation of labour and reduction in well-being, and degrading the ozone layer (Kenton 2020). Some organisations initially wholly committed to profitability as the only measure of effectiveness had embraced TBL as a strategic pursuit or when they discovered that customers were demanding it as a basis for patronage (Kenton 2020). Both legitimacy and stakeholder theory point to the growing need for organisations to embrace sustainability as an effective way to survive (Tyrrell et al. 2013). This is because businesses build a reputation that translates to economic value when they emphasis value creation for all its stakeholders through the emphasis on the TBL measures of effectiveness (Gordon and Reddy 2010). The demand for organisations to behave sustainably is driven from two angles: the UN sustainability goal demand and the increased

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number of advocacy groups educating consumers about their rights and how to demand them. This will continue, and organisations wanting to play the ostrich will discover that their competitors have overtaken them.

Conclusion The chapter established that the issue of TBL reporting has moved from a debate on whether it was necessary to the fact that companies that fail to adopt it will face increasing actions from consumers and advocacy groups. Organisations adopting the TBL measures derive several advantages over those that do not adopt. The latter organisations face increasing negative actions from their consumers and advocacy groups. Organisations can no longer hide under the non-existence of objective measures of TBL to avoid adoption since there are measures. If organisations are willing, they can resolve the measurement challenges. The studies reviewed in this chapter demonstrate that there are foundational behaviours that drive the adoption of TBL, and only organisations that have these behaviours will adopt it. The leadership mindset and values towards TBL measures drive these behaviours. The chapter also advocated that the TBL concept has moved from a legal requirement to an ethical issue. TBL ensures that the values and well-being of the current generation are achieved and that those of future generations are not compromised. This cannot be achieved by assuming TBL adoption is a legal issue. It is an ethical issue and reflects how effectively the organisation is using the resources allocated to it. When leaders misuse resources provided by shareholders, they are brought to account. In the same way, leaders and organisations must be held responsible for misusing resources in the social and environmental domains. Even in the absence of regulation, leaders are called to live out their values and how they decide to use all resources. This will demand a shift from shareholder to stakeholder emphasis. Awareness of the need for sustainable behaviour is growing and the growth will only continue. Organisations must embrace this drive or face negative consequences from consumers and advocacy groups.

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9 Leadership and Sustainability Development Goals: The Role of Ethics and Equity in Leadership in the Next Normal

Ethics and leadership go hand-in-hand. While some tend to think there is a choice to make between being profitable and successful, or behaving ethically, That’s simply not the case. Ethical people and leaders are necessary drivers for success. (Villirilli 2021, p. 6)

Introduction The events of the twenty-first century and what happened during COVID-19 have highlighted the importance of ethical behaviour in organisations. The foundation of most unethical behaviours is the desire of leaders to achieve short-term profitability to make the organisation look good irrespective of the long-term consequences of such actions. Leaders made the same short-term decisions during COVID-19. COVID-19 caused health and financial challenges to organisations and employees. Some leaders took the strategy to protect the short-term survival of the organisations without regard to what the employees were going through. Such leaders justified their actions because only a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_9

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surviving organisation employs people. Other leaders recognised the situation of employees and implemented a communication process that allowed two-way discussion of the challenges facing all organisational participants with the view to taking actions that would protect the organisation and employees. These leaders took some measures to protect the organisation, but the employees were aware of the reasons behind such actions and were duly informed of all the steps. The behaviour of leaders in COVID-19 affected how employees gauged their relationships with their leaders and the organisation (Amah 2022a). The organisations involved in unethical behaviours in the twenty-first century had very functional ethical rules and procedures that were well-­ known and espoused in the entire organisation. The fact that Enron and other scandals happened even though there were ethical rules and laws points to the failure of using externally imposed ethical rules to ensure ethical behaviour in organisations (Amah 2022b; Johnson 2003). After the scandals, regulatory bodies and organisations put in place laws to avoid what happened to these companies. However, the failure of these leaders calls for a better way to design and operate ethically, such that ethics is only partially driven by law. Amah (2022b) stated that organisations practiced the traditional or macro-view of ethics in which laws were established to guide behaviour. What is required, according to the author, is the micro-view based on virtue ethics (Fowers and Tjeltveit 2003; Scordis 2011) which assumes that an individual’s ethical character should be the “foundation of morality” and that individuals should be held responsible for their actions (Arjoon 2000, p.  161). Virtue ethics produces people with an internal drive for ethics, which drives their understanding of the common good and the achievement of personal outcomes while respecting the right of others (Marshall et  al., 2013; Tullberg, 2009). It has been shown that organisations that embrace ethical operations outperform those that use unethical strategies to achieve profitability (Arjoon 2000). Ethics in leadership addresses the issue of whether a leader does the right things at the right time and for the right reasons (Ciulla 2005). The question that should be addressed as businesses move towards full recovery is: are there ethical issues in the decisions made by leaders during

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COVID-19? This chapter proposes that the question should be applied at two levels in the enactment of leadership: handling and dealing with material and human resources. This is because COVID-19 revealed that human resources constitute the only sustainable competitive advantage for an organisation because effective utilisation of any other organisational resources depends on employees. For example, effective utilisation of finance will depend on the decisions employees make. Hence, for a leader to be judged as successful, the leader must achieve success in doing the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reason, and these must be done while handling material and human resources. Unfortunately, most organisations judge an ethical leader based on how ethics was applied in handling material resources irrespective of how they handled the human resources. This is why some leaders pursued the maximisation of profit during COVID-19 at the expense of the needs of employees. What is required post-COVID is a paradigm shift in what constitutes ethical leadership. Ethical leaders should apply ethics in handling material and human resources. Ethical leaders refrain from sacrificing human resources while pursuing an increase in material resources. Leaders who sacrifice human resources to make a profit pursue the narrow interest of shareholders at the expense of the broader stakeholders. To achieve this paradigm shift, literature in ethical leadership must borrow from the history of how inequity was determined. Originally, inequity was based solely on the value of what was received. Later it was discovered that arriving at the values distributed and communicating the result jointly determined how people gauged what inequity was and affected how the people related with leaders who made the equity decisions. Hence, to establish what makes ethical leadership, consideration must be given to how the leader leads and what the leader does while leading. In this way, ethics will conform with the paradigm shift recommended. Hence, the functional definition of ethical leadership used in this chapter is the “demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making” (Brown et al. 2005, p. 120).

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 thical Leadership: What Is and What E Should Be Good leadership is at the intersection of two significant leadership questions: what is leadership ethics? When is leadership effective? (Ciulla 2004). Since leadership involves human relations, ethics as a study of human relations is essential in defining leadership and its effectiveness (Ciulla 2004). Ciulla (2005) saw leadership ethics as inadequately discussed and poorly understood. The author believed the issue could be resolved by understanding and implementing two mutually aligned issues: defining ethical leadership and what they do and creating the environment that would sanction the violation of ethical principles. The first part involves developing leaders who use power responsibly, fulfil a moral obligation to followers, develop followers, make sound moral decisions, and serve every participant in the organisation very well. The second part involves setting up organisational systems and procedures that reward and support ethical leadership while sanctioning unethical leadership. Unfortunately, after the twenty-first-century ethical failures of leaders, the general reaction was to set up systems and procedures to track ethical issues involving the use of material resources rather than including the use and management of human resources. Ethical leadership can be made effective in an environment of shared leadership, and many models of shared leadership exist in literature. Table 9.1 contains the four versions of ethical leadership based on the shared leadership model proposed by Kezar and Holcombe (2017). The co-leadership structure operates among the top executives and would restrict ethical leadership to only the top. Only top leadership will develop and drive ethical leadership across other organisational levels (Halcombe et al. 2022). Others may perceive ownership as residing at the top and not widely shared. Team leadership recognises the existence of various individuals with leadership potential who are coopted into leadership groups. Not all team members have this opportunity. Even though power is dispersed, it is only among a few, and ownership may be perceived as residing in the few. Distributed leadership allows various levels to drive ethics and cascade to other levels. It is

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Table 9.1  Various types of shared leadership in the organisation Co-leadership Description Pairs or small groups of people share leadership

Structure

Often built into formal structure of top executive role

Roles

Roles of co-leaders are: specialised, differentiated, and complimentary

Team leadership

Distributed leadership

Leadership functions Leadership dispersed shared among team across multiple members organisational levels or even organisational boundaries Flexible Flexible configurations configurations that that arise during change based on particular projects or the problem— times of change— though, can also be though can also be formally planned formally planned and structured and structured Leadership shared People across vertically and different horizontally across organisational levels teams based on or boundaries relevant expertise assume leadership as problems arise

Source: Adapted from Kezar and Holcombe (2017, p. 8)

flexible and allows every organisational participant to identify and own ethical initiatives and to have appropriate power to drive the same. The advantage of this option is that every member of the organisation can exercise the responsibility for initiating and driving ethical principles. Ownership is widely available, and influencing people is relatively easy. However, it requires leaders at all levels to give up some of their powers to others. Even though this option is the best, in practice, co-leadership and team leadership are predominant in ethical leadership. The entire shared ethical leadership based on this recommendation draws from the work of Ciulla (2018), which saw leadership as a relationship in which both the leader and follower have responsibilities and power, and leaders must be willing to share power with followers in a symbiotic relationship aimed at strengthening the relationship for the mutual benefit of all. The author believes the relationship should be fluid in that roles can be switched for the benefit of all since “good followers accept responsibility from their leaders” (p. 329).

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In addition to the shared leadership model, the method adopted by the Japanese in driving quality using quality work circles (QWC) can be adapted to the management and enforcement of ethics and equity in organisations. The QWC consists of people selected from various levels of the organisation whose role is to “meet regularly to identify, analyze, and solve quality and related problems in their area of responsibility” (Munchus III 1983, p. 255). The members volunteer themselves for the role. This can be adapted in organisations to manage ethics and equity. Rather than volunteering, members can be drawn from various levels of leadership and non-leaders to form a group whose duty is to identify ethical and equity-related issues, identify those who encouraged or violated the same, and either reward or punish them. Leadership in the group can be rotated between members such that leadership becomes distributed and not confined to managerial levels. Top management can set up a policy around ethics and equity and give the group the responsibility to be watchdogs for the company. This process will motivate employees, and power will be released to the group empowered to act on behalf of the organisation and handle all ethics and equity issues irrespective of whoever is involved. To ensure that all the employees have the opportunity to be motivated through this programme, membership of the ethics and equity group can be made to be for a specific time and rotational. According to Gardner (1990, p. 7), leaders must maintain values such as “caring for others, honour and integrity, and mutual respect” with the understanding that ethics must not be based on law alone. There are four dimensions in which ethical leadership should be achieved (Ciulla 2004), namely, leader as an ethical person, ethics in the leader-follower relationship, ethics of the process of leading, and ethics of what leaders do and do not do. The evaluation of ethical leadership must consider these dimensions, and only if the leader is ethical in all will such a leader pass the ethical test. At the centre of all these dimensions is the mindset of leadership, which is the driver of leadership behaviour while enacting leadership (Lencioni 2020). Specific questions must be answered to understand the need to use shared leadership and Japanese QWC models in organisational ethics. The questions include: when is an organisation ethical? What role do leaders and their followers play in the ethical nature of the organisation?

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Who creates the culture that institutionalises ethics in the organisation such that ethics is sustained? An organisation is unethical if its employees engage in illegal activities or foster a situation or environment that takes advantage of the trust between the organisation and its stakeholders (Dunn 2005). Even when an organisation is considered a legal entity with a life different from organisational participants, it is also an error of reification to believe that the organisation can behave and act. Only organisational participants behave, and such behaviour is ascribed to the organisation. For example, leadership creates the environment and policies that dictate what is allowed and how unethical behaviours are punished; what the leaders create directs how other organisational participants behave and reward or punish them based on compliance and non-­ compliance. Thus, leadership is at the centre of creating an ethical organisation and how violations of ethical laws are treated. Leadership is also responsible for creating succession plans that appoint future leaders who will either sustain ethics or not. Leadership actions control how the organisation values and rewards employees, customers, and suppliers. Hence, Hood (2003) identified that the behaviour of the CEO is responsible for creating and sustaining ethical values in the organisation and that CEOs transmit their ethical values to the organisation. The author also found a significant difference in the ethical values created by different leadership styles. The transactional style drives ethics based on legal requirements, while the transformational style drives ethics based on the voluntary aspect of ethics, such as virtue ethics. Hood (2003) and Dunn (2005) stated that values intersect between the organisation’s leadership style and ethical orientation. Values allowed in the organisation always model the leader’s values. The personal values of integrity, self-respect, and honesty espoused by the leader drive the ethical orientation of the organisation (Carlson and Perrewe 1995; Kirkpatrick and Locke 1991). Dunn (2005) studied lapses in ethical implementation in some organisations and concluded that three leadership characteristics were found in unethical organisations, such as “leader‘s ego, the hiding of information, and excess drive for success” (p. 2). The scandals of the twenty-first century pointed to the need for organisations to consider both the profit achieved and the means used by leaders to achieve profit in gauging the performance of every leader. Thus, the need for organisations to gauge

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effectiveness using the triple bottom line criteria involving social, environmental, and economic criteria of accessing effectiveness. In this way, organisations will behave ethically while dealing with the community, the environment, and internal stakeholders and achieve sustainability. Important sustainability goals that organisations must pursue and install are diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) in their operational strategy. This has enlarged the ethical drive to include how organisations handle DEI policy in dealing with internal and external stakeholders. However, for DEI to be pursued by organisations, it must become part of the organisation’s culture, developed and implemented by top management, and encouraged by the actions taken when the policy is violated (Harvard Business Review: Analytical Service 2019). Equity is not about giving equal attention or opportunity to everyone in the organisation but giving each individual what the person needs to be effective and satisfied (Laker 2021). The author concluded that to achieve this, there is a need for a mindset change and the development of supporting systems that ensure people have the opportunity and capacity to be at their best. The survey by Edelman (2022) indicated that most stakeholders interviewed indicated that leadership must steer the organisation towards addressing injustice in all areas of its operation to earn their trust. The drive for DEI must involve every level of leadership and must encompass all the stakeholders (Deloitte 2021). For example, the CEO must set strategies for DEI and hold direct reports responsible for ensuring compliance in their functional areas. Enhancing DEI through education and setting up various diversity groups is less effective than when it is made a part of the organisation’s culture and way of life of every organisational participant (Winters 2020). Ethics is awakened in the individual and not instilled in the person; it is internally developed and nurtured, not externally forced through laws and regulations (Pastin 1986). Thus, lasting ethical orientation arises from values internalised by a person, which develops an “ethical person” and “Ethical manager” (Ciulla 2004; Waggoner 2010). Personal ethics are built from “virtues, morals, values and principles” (Waggoner 2010, p.  4), held and internalised by the leader. Villirilli (2021) saw ethical leadership as behaving by a set of values that most people consider

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necessary. The author saw the values as “honesty, justice, respect, integrity, responsibility and transparency” (p. 2). In what appeared to be a new model of ethics, Bazerman (2020) advocated that rather than follow external rules and regulations, leaders should follow ethics along the utilitarian principle of “creating the most value for the society” (p. 2). Other authors have also recommended using the principle of right and justice (Schwartz 2016; Schwartz and Carroll 2003; Singer 1996). The advantage of using more than one model of ethics in determining the ethical nature of decisions is that such an approach guarantees ethical decisions that assure no harm to everyone. For example, while the utilitarian view guarantees maximum benefit for the majority, it does not guarantee that the right of all is protected (Chonko n.d). Hence, the model in Fig.  9.1 that utilises the three ethical decision-­ making models is preferred to ensure that, as much as possible, ethical decisions are free of error. This involves progressively moving from one model to another while asking questions about ethics until a possible

Utility: Does the act add value to most people? YES

NO

Right: Does the act respect the right of the individuals involved? YES Justice: Is the act consistent with canons of justice?

NO

Act is unethical.

NO

YES Utility: Does the act add value to most people?

Fig. 9.1  Quick test on ethical decision-making. (Source: Adapted from Kezar and Holcombe [2017, p. 17])

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answer is obtained for all questions. This is because each model addresses a specific issue in ethical decision-making, and when the models are considered collectively, the entire realm of ethics is covered. There are more suggestions on using questions to progressively evaluate ethical decisions to arrive at the most appropriate behaviour based on situational and other contextual variables (see Randall and Gibson 1990; Ross 1930). Ethical leadership is recognised as the most pressing challenge of the organisation in the twenty-first century and is likely to continue in the post-COVID era (Mackie et al. 2006; Plinio et al. 2010). It has been insinuated that there is a crisis of trust in the organisation, a fact that was identified by COVID researchers (Darcy 2010; Frank 2002). Commenting on the role of a servant leader, Greenleaf (1977, p. 200) stated that “service to followers is the primary responsibility of leaders and the essence of ethical leadership.” The author alluded to how leaders treat employees as a component of gauging ethical leadership in the same way the leader manages and handles material resources. The definition of ethical leadership highlights the multiple components of ethical leadership, such as inward virtues directing decision-making, how the leader instructs and directs subordinates, maximising the welfare of others and respecting their freedom, choices of influencing self and others (Cumbo 2009; Martinez-Saenz 2009; Monahan 2012; Plinio 2009; Sandel 2009; Skovira and Harman 2006).

The Move to Virtue Ethics Leaders are expected to demonstrate ethical behaviour in the level of performance achieved and the means used to achieve the level. The importance of this is made evident during COVID-19. For example, leaders were expected to pursue performance but with a human face since COVID-19 placed employees in situations where they expected their leaders to look beyond performance to their challenges. This means the leader was expected to go beyond the legal requirements of ethics into virtue ethics. Virtue ethics focuses on developing ethical behaviour and values based on an inner character. Virtue ethics does not follow only the legal requirements but sees ethics as more than a moral obligation to do what is right, even when

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existing laws postulate something less. According to Gentry and Fleshman (2020), virtue ethics is “helpful to a leader because it motivates one to excel in whatever endeavours pursued” (p. 217). To be a good leader, one must fulfil leadership roles in the moral, normative, and performance components (Ciulla and Forsyth 2011). The authors described effective leaders as those who craft and motivate others to follow a vision but are also “trustworthy, just, and honest” (p. 231) in this pursuit. Virtue ethics differ from duty-based and consequence-based ethics (Gentry and Fleshman 2020). The latter forms of ethics are externally driven and based on legal stipulations. Ethics based on duty recognises legal rules and does not go beyond the duty placed by such rules. For example, duty-based ethics will rationalise the release of employees based on the rule that when there is low revenue and productivity and when no work is done, the payment obligation is not justified. Consequence-based ethics pursues the common good for most people even when some will suffer negative consequences. Leaders who pursue this option will not take steps to see how the consequences of their actions on a few people can be mitigated, provided most people receive positive consequences. Most leaders who advocate this drive shareholders’ strategy because shareholders contribute most of the funds in the organisation, and making them happy is ethical even at the expense of majority stakeholders. Virtue goes deeper than character and values because it is “intentionally selected, deliberately strengthened, behaviourally predictive” (Ciulla and Forsyth 2011, p.  231). Virtue ethics enables leaders to select appropriate decisions in dealing with organisational participants and gives each decision an equal opportunity to arrive at the most ethical decisions considering all the stakeholders (Gentry and Fleshman 2020). Virtue ethics builds a relationship that mutually benefits the parties in the relationship. It does not make unilateral decisions but understands the situation and encourages communication of the consequences of any action to be taken. For example, an ethical leader would recognise that during COVID-19, there were challenges to the survival of the organisation and individuals and that actions must be taken to handle the uncertainty associated with the organisation and the individuals. It will, therefore, communicate and discuss issues openly to arrive at actions that demonstrate compassionate leadership. Summarising the path of virtue ethics, Pellegrino and

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Thomasma (1993) stated that a virtuous person “strives for perfection not because it is a duty, but because he/she seeks perfection in pursuit of the teleo of whatever it is he/she is engaged in” (p. 166).

Creating and Institutionalising Ethical Culture The demand for compassionate leadership that uses soft skills to build symbiotic relationships makes the adoption of virtue ethics in leadership a necessity. This means that leadership development and selection must consider virtue ethics an essential characteristic of future leaders. The first challenge in handling ethical issues in the organisation is creating an ethical culture. Ethical leadership is a prelude to developing a lasting ethical culture in the organisation (Roque et al. 2020). Otherwise, the organisation will pass through a series of ethical paths with each leadership succession (Hood 2003; Schwartz 2013). A model that describes the ethical orientation of leaders and their ability to institutionalise ethical culture is in Fig. 9.2. Two dimensions drive the classification of ethical leaders in the organisation: “ethical person” and “ethical manager.” An ethical person

High

Ethical person and poor ethical manager

Ethical person and ethical manager

Ethical person Unethical person and poor ethical manager

Unethical person and ethical manager

Low

Low

Ethical Manager

High

Fig. 9.2  Model of the ethical orientation of leaders. (Source: Author)

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dimension demonstrates how the leader holds himself ethical and how frequently such action is maintained. A person high in this dimension has a high level of personal ethical values, which cuts across situations and times. The ethical manager dimension demonstrates how the leader holds others responsible for their moral values and does this across people. When a leader is low in this dimension, the leader does not hold people accountable for ethical violations or does so selectively based on relationships. These dimensions give rise to four ethical leadership behaviours as below: Ethical person/poor ethical manager: the leader has high ethical values and holds himself responsible for ethical behaviour but does not hold others responsible for an ethical violation. Such a leader will maintain high personal ethical behaviour. Since the leader does not hold people responsible, they tend to behave ethically when the leader is there and relapse to unethical behaviour when not monitored. The leader can have good ethical rules, but poor implementation may make building ethical culture across the organisation impossible. Ethics does not extend beyond the leader’s tenure because people see it as the leader’s drive, which must end with the leader. Unethical person/poor ethical manager: the leader is openly unethical in whatever the leader does and does not hold people responsible for an ethical violation. There may be laws and procedures that stipulate the ethical principle of the organisation, but such laws are only adhered to by some organisational participants. The organisation has no ethical culture since ethical laws are only on paper and notice boards and are not implemented. Unethical person/ethical manager: the leader is openly unethical but selectively holds people accountable for an ethical violation. The leader holds only those not in the in-group responsible for their unethical behaviours while making excuses for those in the in-group. There may be rules and regulations on ethical behaviour, but they are enforced only when an out-group member violates them. Such a leader is popularly called a hypocrite and is never taken seriously. Ethical person/ethical manager: the leader holds himself responsible for ethical behaviour and everyone responsible for an ethical violation. Ethical rules are widely implemented, creating a company-wide ethical culture that drives behaviours. This culture will be institutionalised and

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remain even when the leader lives in the office, provided the succession plan considers the possession of an ethical person/ethical manager a priority in selecting leaders. An ethical person/ethical manager has ethics as a virtue that has been internalised and demanded in every environment where the leader operates. It is not based on external legal rules imposed on the leader but on what the leader built internally and accepted as a way of life. According to Kaptein (2011, p. 846), ethical culture is the “perception of managers and employees about what constitutes unethical and ethical behaviour in the organisation,” and this forms the basis of making decisions on issues and resolving dilemmas (Cullen et al. 2003). The challenge of how to create and institutionalise ethical culture in an organisation is an ongoing one that has attracted the attention of many researchers (Hood 2003; Roque et al. 2020; Schwartz 2013). These authors recognised that leadership plays a significant role in creating and institutionalising such culture throughout the organisation. Past studies recognised that the ethical orientation of the leader is the primary driver of ethical culture (Hood 2003). For example, Schwartz (2013, p. 46) stated that ethical culture could not be institutionalised “without ethical leadership across the organisation, including the Board of directors.” What happened in Enron and other failed organisations indicated that the unethical behaviour of a leader can infest the entire organisation and cause the destruction of the organisation (Boddy et al. 2010). Ethical culture is the lens through which organisational participants gauge what is ethical to resolve ethical dilemmas (Kaptein 2011). This points to the need for organisational leaders to be ethical person/ethical manager, create an ethical vision and get employees to follow, and exhibit ethical behaviour in all dealings with organisational participants (CIPD 2017). Ethical leaders are always consistent in their behaviours while handling all aspects of the organisation (Marzano 2012). A second challenge is how to institutionalise ethical culture from one leadership tenure to the other. The resolution of the question is critical since it is known that leaders’ ethical orientation plays a significant role in the creation and institutionalisation of ethical culture (Roque et  al. 2020). The authors pointed out that institutionalising ethical culture is hindered by: “weakness in organisational culture, failure in managing

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succession, unethical leadership and moral blindness, lack of consequences for unethical behavior and perception of inequity” (pp. 286–287). When these factors are reviewed with the model in Fig. 9.2, it is evident that what the leader is, is adopted in the leaders’ period. Ethical culture must be transferred to future generations after the leader. Hence, succession plans must be based on a sound ethical orientation driven by an ethical person/ethical manager. Mathooko (2013) stated that a laissez-faire leadership organisation allows people with no ethical values to make ethical decisions, similar to an “unethical person/low ethical manager.”

Conclusion This book chapter continued the search for the future of leadership. However, the chapter emphasises how ethical leadership is understood, conceptualised, and evaluated. The chapter discussed the multidimensional nature of defining ethical leadership in the future of leadership. This is a paradigm shift from how ethical leadership is defined and conceptualised currently. The ethical scandals prevalent in the twenty-­first century challenged the organisation’s and organisational participants’ credibility. The unethical behaviour of leaders led to the loss of confidence and trust, colossal loss in financial resources by stakeholders, and closure of organisations. Trust became a scarce commodity. Organisations and policymakers reacted by developing strict ethical laws to guide the behaviour of leaders who make decisions on behalf of organisations. The lack of trust experienced continued until COVID-19 stepped in. The short-term decisions made by some leaders without regard for what employees and other stakeholders were experiencing further reduced the level of trust. Two issues arose from the past trends in ethical behaviour thinking. The first is that externally imposed ethical laws have little or no effect on whether people behave ethically. The second is that ethics should go beyond being ethical in handling material resources to include how leaders handle human resources affairs. The overemphasis on the former resources at the latter’s expense drove the short-term decision made by leaders during COVID-19.

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In handling ethics in an organisation, two questions are paramount: how to instil lasting ethics in individuals and how to develop and sustain ethical culture beyond a leader’s tenure. To address the first question, the book chapter introduced the concept of virtue ethics as a way to instil ethics in people in the organisation. Virtue ethics recommends that ethics should be driven by the values and virtues internally developed by people. In this way, it becomes who the person is and not what the external laws want them to be. The adoption of virtue ethics led to the development of four types of ethical leaders derived from the combination of ethical person and ethical manager dimensions. Leaders described as “ethical persons/ethical managers” hold themselves responsible for personal ethics and others for their unethical behaviours. Such a leader also works to institutionalise ethics such that even after the leader leaves, ethical culture is already developed to ensure the sustainability of ethics. Shared leaders and adopting the Japanese GWC model were found to be very good at developing an ethical culture widely shared throughout all levels of authority and with employees. Roque et al. (2020) explored the possibility of ethical culture beyond a leader. The authors found out that institutionalising ethical culture in an organisation depends on how an organisation manages the succession process, deep-rooted training in ethics, and how effective the whistleblowing process is. They also identified that moral blindness and lack of originality are mitigating factors. The second challenge necessitates the exploration of what ethical leadership entails. The book chapter recommended that the exploration borrows from what happened in determining what equity means in an organisation. Equity was initially based on distributive justice, which is inferred using only how just what an individual received was. Later such a definition was described as a multidimensional variable using the following dimensions: the process of arriving at the values distributed, how the distribution was made (communication process), and what was distributed determined how people gauged what inequity was. Hence, using the work of Ciulla (2004), the book chapter described ethical leadership as multidimensional, consisting of the leader as an ethical person, ethics in the leader-follower relationship, ethics of the process of leading, and ethics of what leaders do and do not do. These dimensions must be considered jointly in establishing whether a leader is ethical. The future of

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ethical leadership proposed entails seeing ethical leadership from the satisfaction of the dimensions above and doing them in handling material and human resources.

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Part IV Leadership in the Next Normal Post-­COVID-­19 II

This part contains three chapters that discuss behavioural operations management as an aspect of organisations that explains the role of the human capital element in its operational architecture; it emphasises the significant role the human being plays in the development and relevance of any functional architecture. Amongst the inputs for operations, the human being is the only one that can think, act, and decide in tandem with the influence of leadership. Past leadership thinking had followed significant disruption in the structure of work; hence with COVID-19 causing significant disruption in the structure of work and leadership effectiveness, there is a need to look at leadership from the angle of the hidden drivers of leadership behaviour. Hence, this chapter discussed the understanding leadership and leadership mindset as a step in re-­positioning how to select and train leaders. The part concluded with crafting a new approach to understanding leadership post-COVID-19 using data derived from the chapters in Part 3. It draws up a leadership model that captures the book’s various discussions. The chapters covered are: Chapter 10: Post-COVID Operational Excellence: Behavioural Operations Management Chapter 11: Incorporating the Understanding and Leadership Mindset in Leadership Development Chapter 12: Conclusion and Epilogue

10 Post-COVID Operational Excellence: Behavioural Operations Management

Introduction Operational excellence is the modern buzzword in the business community. Many organisations are implementing operational excellence initiatives to improve efficiency towards driving incremental value to the customer coupled with increasing difficulty and cost of sourcing required inputs and resources. Operational excellence, in simple words, entails how organisations improve to attain a competitive advantage towards driving incremental value to the customer. It encompasses how the modern-­day organisation strives to attain resilience and sustainability in a bid to drive performance by leveraging all ramifications of economic, environmental, and social dimensions (Gimenez et  al. 2012; Piasecki 2022; Chevron Corporation 2010). Operational excellence is defined as the strategy organisations use to deliver quality, price, ease of purchase, and service in such a manner that no other organisation in the industry or sector can match (Duggan 2012; Moore 2018) Business or operational excellence can be achieved through the 4Ps. The Ps are excellent people who establish excellent partnerships with suppliers, customers, and society to achieve excellent processes, key business and management processes to produce excellent products that delight customers. Operational excellence is not just about process or © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_10

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systems excellence; neither is it just a seamless integration of process and people in an organisation; it is hinged on the behavioural aspects of the organisation. It is not a product or a by-product of the organisation-wide practice of ideal human behaviours connected with correct principles. Instead, it is about leadership tenacity and vigour; it relates to how organisational leadership anchors the corporate mission, vision, and values to the principles of operational excellence and also helps organisational employees or significant others in the organisation to connect their importance to the principles of operational excellence in a bid to elicit a cultural shift regarding the way of thinking and behaving for organisational employees. It relates to a paradigm shift of the organisational culture, changing the collective behaviour of the organisational employees via the interplay of behavioural impact on processes, operating systems, and management infrastructure. There is always a critical need for every business organisation to strive to align its management infrastructure and operating systems with the behavioural component of an organisation cohesively; some organisations leverage emergent technologies or digitisation to integrate the impact of the human element to improve the efficiency of the operations architecture. The need that seeks to modify or align the sync with a principle to influence the human component of people’s behaviour towards an ideal is a critical game changer that organisations can leverage, as it were, for a competitive advantage.

Concept of Operational Excellence Operational excellence is not synonymous or the same as process excellence; operational excellence is beyond process excellence and is hinged mainly on the efficiency and effectiveness of the flow of value added to the customer. In an ever-evolving business milieu, where change is the only constant parameter, as a function of responsiveness to customer’s demand for quality product offerings and excellent business frameworks, there is an increasing need to adapt and attain competitiveness (Carvalho et al. 2019; Sony 2019). Operational excellence-driven programmes or initiatives strive to manage change in a time-bound way, not to drive change but by providing tools and operational architecture for the human

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capital in organisations to deal with and handle change for the common good. The human capital or human factor in most organisations is that factor that leverages organisational culture for the implementation and sustainability of the bit of operational excellence to a large extent. This essential operational synergy is only feasible if operations executives can lead beyond cultural fit towards re-enacting and promoting an organisational orientation hinged on long-term success. Logically, a school of thought thinks this connection will help elicit and encourage characteristics and enablers of agility and resilience that would serve as a dynamic operational platform in cognisance of an emergent global disruptive business environment. However, in an emergent globalised and competitive business world, organisational excellence has proven to be a critical part of the search for sustainable organisational success (Evans and Jack 2003; European Foundation for Quality Management 2017; Bhattacharya et  al. 2020); this line of reason implies that operational excellence is hinged on a set of principles and practices, that, if effectively and sustainably implemented, will promote the continuous improvement of an organisation, while, on the flip side, enacting new opportunities, new processes, and new tools or techniques in tandem with the search for sustainable organisational results. In a globalised world that is currently witnessing immersive global disruptions characterised by empowered and well-informed customers coupled with increasing uneasiness in doing business in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, there is an emergent competitive framework for organisations to drive incremental value to their customers in a bid to improve and perform to leverage operational excellence as a way of life towards attaining organisational excellence and resilience (Sampaio et al. 2012). Despite the robust advantage of the operational excellence framework, no best model and operational diversity guarantee a level-playing ground that fosters the required improvement. So what does operational excellence mean and connote? Excellence does not entail a short-term quick-­ fix measure as deemed by some schools of thought but as a philosophical management architecture that is undergirded by a set of principles and behaviours that is required to guide and inspire business leaders and managers to produce long-term futuristic sustainable improvement and

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value in alignment with evolving customer and market requirements (Shingo institute 2014). In conformance with this school of thought, a similar school of thought posits that the absolute actualisation and implementation of excellence begins when it is anchored on full integration with the culture and practices of an organisation (Araujo and Sampaio 2014; Lu et al. 2011). Accordingly, in agreement with evolving schools of thought regarding the relevance of operational excellence framework, the integration of excellence models can be achieved as a combination of strategic planning and deployment in alignment with systems, processes, and procedures as basic strata of organisations linking operating systems, management infrastructures and mindset and behaviours of organisational employees. Thus, excellence is an integration of the components of the organisation’s culture, values, and people; it is not defined or hinged by a prescriptive standard, as it were. A corollary from the above reasoning is that operating systems and management infrastructures do not manage themselves or effect changes in organisations because these components are inanimate by themselves and inadequate, but rather the human element is required and essential to drive and achieve results; with reference to a similar school of thought, thus, according to the Shingo institute (2014), tools, inputs, capital and processes do not manage themselves. Still, people in these organisations interact and use these aspects of operations to achieve results in alignment with evolving market requirements and established beliefs, values, and cultures of the organisations in question. Operational excellence is beyond the drive for process excellence or recalibration for only improvement via improvement methodologies. Many organisations improve their process flow but fail to attain or achieve operational excellence. Operational excellence is focused on the continuous improvement of processes or incremental-oriented process flow that creates and delivers value-add in the form of products and services to business customers. It is an operational framework that enables value creation hinged on innovation and change management principles. Its objective is to eliminate silo-focused process flows or processes along the value stream (upstream, midstream, or downstream) while re-enacting a work culture of visibility and interconnectedness of workflows amongst organisational employees. This component of operational excellence

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resonates with the human element or soul of the organisation since it resonates with the mindsets and behavioural capabilities of business organisations. It is a crucial nexus that connects operational excellence with the behavioural component of an organisation: it depicts the point at which every employee can recognise the flow of value to the business customer and proactively resolve the bottleneck or constraint that would impede the flow to the customer (Institute of Operational Excellence 2012). A typical nugget that confronts most business organisations that want to embark on the journey of operational excellence is the ambivalence of dealing with the issue of culture first or diving into the application of the operational tools and principles (Institute of Operational Excellence 2021; Joshi et al. 2021; Theadore and Anderson 2009). In most cases, some organisations are attracted by the latter option; the recourse to this option has often resulted in abysmal outcomes for these organisations: the inherent challenge with this option is that these organisations have had to contend with the inability to sustain change. Sustaining change resides in the behavioural aspect of the employees of any organisation. Sustainable and responsible change resonates with the will of the human capital element of an organisation; it resides little in operating systems and management infrastructure. Behaviour is human, and the human component of an organisation requires an enabling ambience to thrive, think, and act with the appropriate decision levers. Orchestrating a business ambience that would energise organisational employees demands a leadership framework that would elicit the proper behaviour to drive operational excellence, as illustrated in Fig. 10.1. Many definitions of operational excellence abound, but capturing its essence has been difficult. This dilemma has also affected the different interpretations and applications in the business world. According to the Institute of Operational Excellence (2012), the challenge is that organisations lack a precise definition and a concise roadmap to follow for achieving it; albeit, in a bid to properly define operational excellence, there is a need to unravel some confusion regarding the essence of continuous improvement, and misconception or misunderstanding its application in the realm of constant improvement as a function of some improvement methodologies. Some schools of thought think that the unending quests for improvement in business with a view to driving efficiency and cost

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People & Culture Strategic Message

Quality Mindset OE

Process Efficiency and Effectiveness

Cl Performance Management

Fig. 10.1  A link depicting the connection between operational excellence and other components of an organisation. (Source: Adopted from Anderson et al. 2005)

reduction will result in sustainable business growth, but this has become elusive and a mirage in most instances. The fundamental questions remain: How can business organisations align the unending quest for efficiency with a sustainable demand for organisational services and products? What should organisational leaders need to know and understand to leverage operational excellence to achieve business growth? Thus, the approach towards attaining the appropriate definition for operational excellence should be hinged on the definition that every organisational employee at different levels can understand and how to actualise it (Institute of Operational Excellence 2012). This line of reasoning resonates with how organisational employees perceive value and customer needs; thus, they would invariably attain the knowledge that continuous improvement is not just about process improvement, waste elimination, or cost reduction but resides in the behavioural connection with perpetual value chain creation and sustainability in a business operational sense. The implication is that business organisations should inhabit that goal of operations in tandem with other business functions that create and

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deliver value in the form of products and services; this should align with the customer’s needs towards eliciting perpetual and responsible business growth. The preceding logical explanation about the definition of operational excellence indicates that an operational nexus exists between a business’s operating systems and behavioural components. This nexus resides in an enabling work environment based on a culture of a thriving drive for excellence geared towards the customer’s needs. An operational-­ enabled culture that begets and sustains excellence. Thus, operational excellence can be defined as a culture where every employee can perceive value flow to the customer and fix it before it breaks down (Institute of Operational Excellence 2012). This definition confers a mutual sense of belonging among all organisational employees irrespective of their cadre or status; it also depicts the business urgency need to imbue the employees with the ability to detect, recognise, and resolve operational issues that are abnormal or may adversely affect the flow of value to the organisational customers.

Behavioural Aspect of Operational Excellence Operational excellence is beyond process and people integration; it is culture-orientated, human-sensitive characteristic enablement that provides value add for organisational customers hinged on a holistic operations architecture. However, it requires a tinge of excellence from people’s motivation and participation, strong leadership, top management commitment, fully involved employees, and a cultural orientation towards excellence. It is not just a set of tools, methodology, or an approach that seeks excellence to manifest itself but a consciously driven excellence-­ oriented culture hinged on operational imperative geared towards fostering an inherent culture transformation. This transformational alignment hinges on the fit between culture and the drive for excellent execution in most business organisations (Irani et al. 2004; Evans 2010). Devoid of this fit between culture and the pitch for execution, operational excellence is a mirage.

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The culture that subsists in an organisation depends on the type and quantum of leadership style that exists in an organisation. It goes beyond institutionalising values or ethos in an organisation; it is about leadership creating a shared experience of connecting the core beliefs and identity of the organisation. This is the essence and driving momentum behind operational excellence. In other words, operational excellence should help employees and leaders of organisations navigate the flow of value creation via their actions while connecting with the core beliefs and values of the organisation. Some businesses are contending with emergent global disruption, and the human element would enable employees, irrespective of their cadres to navigate the turbulent business terrain with a measured focus to stay on track. Staying on track would be buoyed by the appropriate leadership capabilities that institutionalise the requisite building blocks of operational excellence: strategy deployment, performance management, process excellence, and high-performing teams. Strategy deployment will elicit tenacity for execution; performance will spurn employees with the relevant calibration of sustainable financial goal operational goals; process excellence will define and map sustainable value stream; high-performance teams will aggregate engaged and empowered workforce and collaborative employees. The human aspects of an operations architecture are important for the efficient and effective delivery of value to the market. Evidence suggests that human skills are becoming increasingly critical in a globally disruptive world. The need to drive operational excellence would necessitate human capabilities in different spheres of the organisation (Bollard et al. 2017). In some business environments where repetitive tasks are being handled by emergent technologies that seek machine learning in sync with human personalisation, there exist roles that would require new work skills as a derivate of evolving leadership styles. A school of thought believes the recourse to operational excellence via digitisation might compromise human productivity; another school of thought thinks integrating digital and analogue (human intervention) would improve productivity. In the same vain, some business organisations are grappling with answers to the following questions:

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• Do business organisations understand how customers interact with their value chains and how they want to in the future? • How can organisations improve and curate customers’ experience using the integration of digital and human channels? • How can organisations speed up operational metabolism by uncovering new opportunities for improved customer experience in a globally disruptive world? • Can business organisations leverage a flexible culture to forge customer collaboration in a state of flux? Thus, to find answers to the above questions, business leaders would need to understand their markets and curate customer needs; this would provide a leeway to integrate operational excellence and behavioural components of business organisations. However, organisational leaders, by default, can leverage this integration default to undergird the enablers of agility. Despite these barrage of concerns emanating from the business community, operational excellence possesses a strategic philosophical framework interlaced with an internal focus on systemic well-being and an external on the needs of the customers (Năftănăilă and Cioană 2013; Theadore and Anderson 2009; Jacobides 2019). The implication is that business organisations that intend to leverage operational excellence as a competitive advantage should strive to balance customer intimacy with operational excellence by providing a tailored solution for their markets (Power 2013). Both ends of this divide require a strong business affiliation for the behavioural component of any organisation that wants to thrive and succeed in the incoming decades. For instance, some organisations have leveraged Tesco’s discipline based on the principles of operational excellence, anchored on the behavioural components of their employees to improve customer experience. By integrating these two components, these organisations have sustainably and responsibly delivered incremental value to the markets. Operational excellence requires a tacit focus on the sustainable achievement of business results and behaviours—the human component of organisations (The Shingo Institute 2014). Accordingly, organisations should strive to embody the following hinged on their culture:

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1. Organisations’ ideal behaviours should emanate from principles that drive desired outcomes. Organisations that chose to drive their operations with principles that foster ideal human behaviours would deliberately create outcomes that would sustainably flow value to their customers responsibly. Evolving needs that are by-products of the market will always be infinite; thus, only the behavioural component of organisations fulfils these infinite needs. 2. Business principles should resonate sustainably with the culture of the organisations as means of integrating the human component and operating systems; this requires the intervention of operational leadership. Leadership shapes organisations’ culture, values, and ethos; culture creates the ambience for organisational employees to thrive and innovate. This invariably elicits commitment from the human component of the organisation geared towards driving execution based on the principles of operational excellence. A culture of operational excellence flourishes on the framework of respect for organisational employees and humility on the side of leadership as a function of intrinsic commitment sustained over a period of time. This type of leadership cohesively creates and supports appropriate synergy for operating systems, management infrastructure, and behavioural capabilities: this is the crux of operational excellence driven by the enabling leadership framework. 3. Organisations should enable work frameworks that would provide principle-based behaviours by aligning operating systems, management infrastructure, and the intended impact of employees. Globally, imperatives from the market have indicated value creation in tandem with customers’ needs, which would invariably propel operational leaders to configure their operating systems responsibly. This situation would depend on how the human component is managed, deployed, and upgraded towards entrenching new capabilities (Surak 2017). In other words, realism has dawned on the operational leaders that aside from the traditional operating system, there is a need to consistently align the deployment of the human capital element in sync with operational excellence requirements.

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Implications of Behavioural Operations in Manufacturing Organisations Business organisations whose operations create value for the customers by providing tangible production require a huge dosage of operational excellence. Accordingly, the deployment of emergent technologies is revolutionising manufacturing operations and their attendant aspects, such as supply chain management in recent times (Gupta 2018; Lu et  al. 2016); however, the behavioural component of manufacturing has a crucial role for business organisations. For developed economies where the deployment of emerging technologies such as IoT, digitalisation, and industry 4.0 have influenced value delivery significantly, manufacturing operations that used to be domiciled in China and some developing countries are being re-outsources back to the developed climes. On the flip side, manufacturing operations in developing countries are yet to deploy emerging technologies due to limitations posed by infrastructural deficits, and weak institutional frameworks. Aside from these evolving global perspectives, an acute shortage of human talent has impeded the acceleration of digitisation enablement in recent times (Alicke et al. 2022; Edmans 2019). This dearth of human talent might pose crucial limitations to manufacturing operations that require the intervention of emergent technologies to upscale the synergy needed for the operating system, management infrastructure, and behavioural capabilities. Thus, this context requires a leadership capability that would provide the appropriate cultural enablement in a bid to elicit the necessary behavioural capabilities for the manufacturing ecosystem. This is also another dimension of transformation. Globally, a paradigm shift would necessitate a fresh tinge of transformation for manufacturing operations. Transforming the performance of manufacturing operations would be occasioned by changing the behavioural culture of business organisations; this requires that operational leadership adapt and adopt a changing cultural framework; operational leadership would also assume a novel leadership style in conformance with emerging realities within the global manufacturing ecosystem. This scenario implies that operational leadership involved in the management

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of manufacturing operations needs to embark on three essential fundamental behavioural shifts to navigate the leadership style obtainable in most manufacturing ecosystems globally (Jenkins 2017; Bhattacharya et  al. 2020). These behavioural shifts would encompass the following dimensions: • Operational leadership should dovetail to asking questions rather than answers. This operational default would enable leaders to tap from the latent capabilities inherent in their workforce and leverage them to solve problems sustainably from the root-cause perspective. • Some leaders have approached problem-solving using the wrong dimension. It behoves manufacturing executives to dig and unravel the root causes of problems rather than have recourse to quick fixes. This approach requires time and discipline on the part of the leadership, but it would stand such business organisations in good stead sustainably and responsibly. Another advantage of this approach is that it would afford organ allow organisational leaders ample time to develop their people’s problem-solving capabilities in the long run • A critical business skill of any global leader is the inert ability to re-­ enact the future. This ability on the leadership cadre resonates strategically with the manufacturing ecosystem where the product offerings have short shelf lives. This situation implies that leaders and executives in charge of the affairs of the manufacturing ecosystem need to, as a matter of urgency, connect the future to today’s business realities; this would also entail that these leaders connect and understand the behavioural component of their organisations. • Globally, customers’ expectations from the manufacturing ecosystem are rapidly evolving; thus, there is a need for leadership to rethink and re-align their manufacturing capabilities with the leverage of soft capabilities of operational excellence.

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Implications of Behavioural Operations in Service-based Organisations More than ever before, it is an urgent need to refine the global imperative for growth strategies; this situation has enormous implications for service-­ based organisations. Preceding the decades of incremental change, the service delivery is now positioned for an irreversible path to radical reinvention (Josselyn et  al. 2022). Emergent technologies are the inherent factor fuelling this reinvention in the service ecosystem enabled by human capabilities. Globally, service organisations account for about 80% of the operational cost of most service-based organisations; however, the issue of bottlenecks is relatively linked to the fact that service operations are heavily dependent on and driven by people. Aside from this, variability in service delivery has been attributed to a host of human-related risks ranging from inconsistent performance to a need for more required human capabilities. This situation has exacerbated the evolving global disruption experienced in several service sectors, which have posed incremental challenges to leaders regarding managing, motivating, retooling, and upskilling service-based employees. By default, leaders in the service ecosystem have had to contend with managing performance and cost and balancing the trade-offs amongst other competitive variables. However, with the emergence of incidents of global disruption, the focus of priority for service leadership has shifted to cope with rapid and extreme digitisation, workspace virtualisation, contactless service operations, and difficulty accessing new talent for the service ecosystem. The resultant implication of this dire situation is that an imperative exists for the service operational architecture to be reinvented and retooled. This emergent paradigm shift has paved the way for operational leadership in the service arena to rethink the evolving service delivery dimension in a globally disrupted world. The evolution of the traditional management service to the integrated and globalized value chain that enhanced endto-end visibility, was made possible by the adoption of the reinvented and imperative service operations leadership. With the leverage that emerging technologies have enabled for the ease automation of service process architecture, there is a seeming obfuscation of the usual labour-intensive

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service flow, thereby paving the way for an enhanced service operation whose limiting bottleneck is no longer technology but underlying processes. Despite the drive for automated service flow operations poised for high-performance delivery, its execution engine still requires a high-quality human element to design, operate, and improve its performance. This situation has implications for service operations leadership to rethink its approach to engaging the appropriate human capital and behaviour would unleash agility and flexibility across the service operations architecture. What this portends for operational leadership and behavioural operations is that service organisations need to attain the realisation that recourse to dynamic talent management of human capital and behaviour as a way of mitigating the ensuing gap between skill demands and supply in access to the global pool for efficient service delivery. Service organisations that have built and attained a global reputation for operational excellence as the basis for the adoption of new technologies, novel models, and new routes to the market should find answers to the following questions if they still to reclaim global relevance (Josselyn et  al. 2022; Munoz-Seca 2019): 1. What are the strategically important elements of our service operations? 2. What critical attributes do we need to drive competitive advantage in those operations? 3. Do we have the tools, capabilities, and talent to succeed? 4. Should we transform our existing operations or use the industrial revolution in services principles to build entirely new businesses? To this end, service operations leaders can have recourse to the principles of operational excellence regarding the outcome of decisions, and the consequence of operational leadership’s impact on the behavioural component of a service organisation. A critical game changer for operational leadership in a service-based ecosystem is integrating the principle and matrix of operational excellence into a culture. Concretely, it is about the interaction of the behavioural component of a service operation that possesses the inert capability to think and act; it is a component of operational excellence that resonates with a mindset and behavioural capabilities inherent in a service operations ecosystem. The role of human

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intervention in service operations is important. Its essence determines how the service experience is re-enacted and delivered to the customer. In an evolving global business world, where value creation and delivery tend towards the service ecosystem, the role of the human component in tandem with its behavioural capabilities would continue to define the ultimate essence of any service experience by the customer; and delivery of value to the customer. If technology is making service offerings the new “product” (Bhattacharya et  al. 2020), the behavioural aspect of service architecture is sacrosanct.

Implications of Behavioural Operations in Hybrid Organisations A hybrid-based organisation is a type that delivers both tangible production and service experience to the business customer. These types of organisations exist in developed and developing countries. As leverage for competitive advantage, operational excellence is also important for flowing value from a business organisation to a customer. Unlike manufacturing or service operations, a hybrid organisation possesses attributes of both regarding operating systems, management infrastructure, and behavioural capabilities and mindsets. However, the impact of the behavioural component as energised by the human element is also significant and critical in all its ramifications; thus, for hybrid organisations, the challenges that the leverage of operational excellence will help to overcome are enormous. Accordingly, challenges will encompass resolving issues of bottlenecks in supply networks, navigating sourcing strategies in a global supply chain ecosystem, improving visibility along the supply value chain, addressing vulnerabilities within globalised supply flows, and dearth of human talents for emerging digitised value chains (Alicke et al. 2022). Thus, for hybrid organisations, behavioural capabilities as a function of operational excellence should drive and enable resilience focused on improving visibility along the value chain, scenario planning, and prioritising digital talent availability. Albeit the availability of digital talent would constitute a significant challenge for most hybrid

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organisations in the coming years, and for developing countries, this challenge would even be exacerbated by the evolving issue of capital flight from the developing to the developed climes. In this vain, business leaders in charge of a hybrid organisation whose operations are domiciled in developing countries would need to have recourse to the practice and principles of operational excellence if they must weather the operations challenge in the coming decades.

Impact of Global Disruption on Behavioural Operations and Operational Excellence Global disruption is a critical dimension that impacts behavioural operations and operational excellence. Another dimension of this global disruption is that rather than becoming a norm, organisations need to recalibrate it as a part of their operational assumption (Piasecki 2022). From a global operations perspective, operations leaders need a good grasp and understanding of the value proposition from the customer’s end and flow these narratives back to their operational architecture for optimal value delivery. This novel approach requires the synergy of behavioural components and operational excellence; it would also forge a close collaboration between marketing and operations in delivering an improved customer experience. Albeit some key imperatives for operations leaders is that today’s incidents of global disruption have made it somewhat a daunting challenge to achieve a seamless operations flow than years in the past. The implication is that operations leaders need to drive operational excellence by leveraging culture and emerging technologies to be responsive to supply chain disruptions, and global and environmental upheavals geared towards eliciting operations ecosystems that are agile and responsive to the global milieu. Another critical recalibration for operations leaders is that they need to gauge the inertia of their organisations; this is imperative that they can leverage the behavioural component of operational excellence in navigating the relationships and capabilities of the concerned organisational workforce. Aside from these imperatives,

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operations leaders have a critical responsibility to envision and create an enabling operating environment. Operational leadership need to develop and assume new capabilities to adopt and adapt to evolving and complex operating environments. According to Josselyn et al. (2022) and Aghai-­ Khozani et al. (2022), business leaders operating globally are re-inventing business ecosystem towards the achievement of business growth, top-line improvement, and revamping novel value add for their markets; an imperative regarding this operational drive is that business leaders have to leverage the operational excellence in orchestrating cultural shift, isolate silos, and overcome barriers to creativity and innovation. Presently, the incidents of global disruption have occasioned business leaders to recalibrate their operational assumptions towards flexibility for adapting rapid execution and adopting long-term plans; this would help them to shift their strategic focus from cost-effectiveness to maximisation of throughput. The implication of this operational onus rests on business leaders to have recourse to optimising operations architectures along some best practice towards attaining global relevance (Aghai-Khozani et al. 2022): need to elevate customer centricity by enabling a pull demand-driven operations; align long strategic planning and daily tactical plans, this is critical for developing countries; optimise the inter-phase between operations and sales cum market; need to improve visibility and feasibility with a bid to understand operational constraints; and use scenario analysis to navigate what-if-questions. The decision of business leaders in the operations terrain to navigate times of disruption would largely depend on how they can optimally leverage and integrate behavioural operations and operational excellence.

Conclusion The need for operations leaders to innovate and reinvent their operations architectures amidst emergent global business realities as occasioned by disruption has become a crucial imperative. The dearth and migration of digital talent, rapidly evolving value chains, scarcity of critical inputs, and upscaling of customer value propositions have occasioned the need for operations leaders to reinvent their operating systems and align their

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management infrastructure with the principles of operational excellence that would also innovate its behavioural capabilities. In a word, business leaders would need to invoke and align their operations architecture with the mindset and behavioural capabilities towards influencing behavioural components in sync with the culture of their organisations. Cultural enablers would elicit the required behavioural capabilities for organisational employees and leaders to embark on an efficient transformation roadmap to understand and build a culture of operational excellence.

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Jacobides, M.G. 2019. Goodbye to Business as Usual. London Business School Review 30 (2/3): 36–39. Jenkins, A. (2017). Advancing Manufacturing Leadership. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­insights/ advancing-­manufacturing-­leadership Joshi, N.H., H. Khan and I. Rab. 2021. A Design-Led Approach to Embracing an Ecosystem Strategy. Design Practice. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-­design/our-­insights/a-­design-­led-­approach-­to-­embracing-­an-­ ecosystem-­strategy. Josselyn, F.C., K. Gilson, D. Patnaik and R. Sood. 2022. How CEOs Can Win the New Service Game. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https:// www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-­insights/how-­ceos-­can-­win-­ the-­new-­service-­game. Lu, D., A.  Betts, and S.  Croom. 2011. Re-investigating Business Excellence: Values, Measures and a Framework. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence 22 (12): 1263–1276. Lu, C.S., P.L.  Lai, and Y.P.  Chiang. 2016. Container Terminal Employees’ Perceptions of the Effects of Sustainable Supply Chain Management on Sustainability Performance. Maritime Policy & Management 43 (5): 597–613. https://doi.org/10.1080/03088839.2016.1190471. Moore, G. 2018. Operational Excellence Is the New Customer Intimacy. Retrieved on March 5, 2023, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ operational-­excellence-­new-­customer-­intimacy-­geoffrey-­moore/. Moscoso, P., and A. Lago. 2017. Operations Management for Executives. Realise the Full Potential of Your Organisation. McGraw Hill Education. Munoz-Seca, B. 2019. How to Get Things Right. A Guide to Finding and Fixing Service Delivery Problems. IESE Business Collection. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­14088-­5. Năftănăilă, I.R., and G.  Cioană. 2013. Operational Excellence–A Key To World-Class Business Performance. Studies in Business and Economics 8 (3): 133–140. Piasecki, D. 2022. Stepping Up: What COOs Will Need to Succeed in 2023 and Beyond. Operations Practice, McKinsey & Company. https://www. google.com/search?q=Stepping+up%3A+What+COOs+will+need+to+s ucceed+in+2. Power, B. 2013. Operational Excellence, Meet Customer Intimacy. Operations and Supply Chain Management. Business Harvard Review. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://hbr.org/2013/03/operational-­excellence-­meet-­cu

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11 Incorporating the Understanding and Leadership Mindset in Leadership Development

Introduction A leader may not recognize the personal characteristics that cause people to follow him or her, but the followers respond to those characteristics. (Crosby 1997)

Chapter 6 reviewed leadership effectiveness before COVID-19 and how COVID-19 presented a need to re-evaluate what constituted leadership effectiveness. Chapter 7 used qualitative research to establish what employees, leaders, academics, and HR professionals think would be the future of leadership. These reviews concluded that leaders require soft and hard skills to be effective. However, soft skills were expected to take a central stage in the effectiveness of leaders post COVID-19. All these reviews were based on the assumption that leadership behaviour drives the climate created by leaders, which in turn drives the performance of employees. Hence, leadership development involves discussing the various leadership styles, the climates they create, and their effects on employees’ behaviour. The model of leadership development during this period is in Fig. 11.1. The figure shows that leadership development has always emphasised the factor above the iceberg to help leaders know the effects of different leadership styles on employee behaviour. This is expected to encourage leaders to adopt leadership styles that create positive © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_11

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Employee Behaviour

Organizational Climate

Factors above the Iceberg

Leadership Behaviour

????

Factors below the Iceberg

Fig. 11.1  Leadership development model (top of the iceberg). (Source: Author)

organisational climates that drive expected positive behaviour from employees. However, it is difficult to get this done without aligning the behaviour to internal dispositions to behave as expected. Hence, some leadership development experts have questioned the effectiveness of the leadership development process before and during COVID-19 (Beer et al. 2016; Gurdjian et al. 2014). For example, Beer et al. (2016) identified that though leaders showed some signs of improvement, follow-up studies also determined that the leaders did not sustain the improvement but reverted to some default styles that did not align with what drives superior employees’ performance. The disruptions caused by COVID-19 brought more challenges to the development of leadership and leadership effectiveness (Amah 2023; Mackay 2021). While observing the behaviours of leaders during COVID-19, Lencioni (2020) corroborated the observations of past authors and insinuated that “some people will not embrace the instructions provided because of why they wanted to become a leader in the first place” (Lencioni 2020, p. 46). The author referred to this as the motive for leadership. However, Beer et al. (2016) and Gurdjian (2014) preferred to consider the mindset arising from why leaders wanted to take up a leadership position.

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Rather than use the motive of leadership, this book chapter adopted the concepts of understanding leadership and leadership mindset to represent what Lencioni (2020) described as a motive. The phrase understanding of leadership has been understood in many ways. For example, it has been used to describe how people understand leadership theory and practice and how they affect productivity (Brown n.d.; Fox 1998; UKEssays 2018). It is necessary to explain how it is used in the hidden factor that drives the leadership mindset. Understanding of leadership is used in the concept of what leaders think is why they are in leadership. Why do people love to be leaders? Leadership mindset is the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations leaders draw from their understanding of leadership, which ultimately drives their leadership behaviour. Thus, leadership behaviour is the physical or outward manifestation of the hidden factors of understanding and leadership mindsets. Past leadership thinking had followed significant disruption in the structure of work; hence with COVID-19 causing substantial disruptions in the design of work and leadership effectiveness, there is a need to look at leadership from the angle of the hidden drivers of leadership behaviour. Hence, this chapter discusses understanding leadership and leadership mindset as a step in re-positioning how to select and train leaders in the next normal.

The Hidden Drivers of Leadership Behaviour Leaders in the organisation continuously influence employees in all situations to work towards superior organisational productivity (Indeed Editorial Team 2022). This definition indicates that leadership operates at the nexus of the leader’s behaviour, follower characteristics, and situation. This definition challenges the previous concept of one best leadership behaviour that is effective in all situations and introduces the idea that what should be emphasised is effective leadership behaviour that harmonises the demands of the follower and the situation to drive superior performance. Leadership development has recognised this shift and trains leaders to identify the effects of different leadership behaviours in different situations. It also trains leaders to modify their behaviour as

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situations change. The development of leaders inculcates integrity, honesty, how to resolve conflict, self-awareness, use of two-way communication, adaptability, and empathy. These are expected to be necessary for crafting leadership behaviours that create a positive organisational climate where employees willingly build positive relations, collaborate, engage, and increase productivity. The current method in developing leaders assumes that leaders effectively influence employees when they know the effect of various leadership styles and can select the style that fits followers’ characteristics and the situation. For example, when a leader has to influence an employee with low competency, the best style would be directing the followers by telling them what to do, how to do it, and when. However, when an employee has high competency, the leader would delegate to the employee but only stipulate the end goal of the process. When a leader uses delegating for low competency and directing style for high-competency employees, the leader would overwhelm the low-competency employee and micromanage the high-competency employee. After a long time of developing leaders, Beer et al. 2016, and Lencioni 2020 concluded that what was taught were the external factors driving productivity and that consideration should have been given to what drives the external factors. The authors concluded that this omission was responsible for the inability of leaders to maintain and sustain the way of leading acquired during development because they had to default to what was internal to them that drove what they do. Aggregating the views of these authors led to the development of Fig. 11.2, which captures both above and below the iceberg. Thus, correctly understanding leadership will involve considering all the factors above and below the iceberg in understanding effective leadership behaviour. This model demonstrates the ease with which leaders adopt different leadership behaviour that aligns with follower characteristics. The situation will differ depending on how the leader understands leadership and the resultant leadership mindset. For example, Kouzes and Posner (1987), quoted in UKEssays (2018), stated that successful leaders challenge the process, inspire a shared vision, enable others to act, and model the way for them to follow. Though leaders influence people through the

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Employee Behaviour

Organizational Climate

Factors above the Iceberg

Leadership Behaviour

Leadership Mindset

Factors below the Iceberg

Understanding of Leadership Fig. 11.2  Leadership development model including above and below iceberg factors. (Source: Author)

leadership behaviours they enact, individual dispositions will drive the path leaders will follow in achieving such influence. The two dispositions discussed in this chapter are the understanding of leadership and leadership mindset. UKEssays (2018) made two valuable contributions to the search for the factors that drive leadership effectiveness. The first is the recognition of the factors needed for the enactment of leadership. These are leaders, followers, communication, and situations. Different situations call for different leadership behaviour. For example, the behaviour used in resolving poor performance will differ from what will be used in a good performance. Similarly, different followers may require different leadership behaviour to influence them. For example, a follower with low competency will require a directing style, while the leader will adopt delegating behaviour for followers with high competency. Hence, a leader must have the inner disposition to vary leadership style depending on the followers’ characteristics and situation.

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Whatever behaviour is used in the situation, the leader must communicate effectively to influence followers. The second is identifying leadership frameworks and what leader’s action will be effective in each framework. The frameworks are structural, human resources, political, and symbolic. The conclusion from the authors is that in each framework, effectiveness is achieved when the leader properly understands leadership.

Understanding of Leadership and Leadership Mindset A famous debate expected to resolve the issue of hidden and exposed factors in leadership development is whether leadership should be left to the practical or the theoretical approach. Those who subscribe to the former approach encourage learning leadership through leaders’ leadership experiences. The advocate of this claim that the experiences include “point to real-world application, clear steps, and down-to-earth language” (Brown n.d., Fox 1998; Krames 2005). The second approach subscribes to research-based sources in studies carried out by leadership researchers. The advocates argued that the research is grounded in sound leadership theory. As convincing as these approaches are, they all handled what this book chapter called the top of the iceberg in unravelling leadership effectiveness. They all addressed the leadership style, the organisational climate, the style drive, and the results of leadership enactment. They could not have accurately addressed the bottom of the iceberg factors (hidden factors), namely the understanding of leadership and leadership mindset. Understanding of leadership is why the leader wants to assume a leadership position. Leadership can mean obtaining and enhancing status, which enhances the leaders’ power and authority. When leaders have this understanding of leadership, they pursue what they want and desire (Ngambi 2011). Every emphasis is on the leader and what makes the leader’s power and authority visible. When leadership is understood as a means of service, the emphasis is on the follower and how they can be developed to make superior performance to organisational productivity.

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These two ways of understanding leadership will give rise to two different leadership mindsets. “Leadership mindset is the attitude, beliefs, values and expectations” (Hussain and Joshi 2016, p. 1); a leader holds that acts as a foundation of who the leader is, how the leader enacts leadership, and interacts with followers (Dweck 2006). Leadership mindset is critical in effectiveness, but it is the least understood and neglected issue in leadership (Korn Kerry Institute 2018). The author identified that leadership development concentrated on understanding different leadership styles and how to change the styles to align with the changing situation and followers’ characteristics. Still, more must be done to understand how the leadership mindset that drives leadership styles affects leaders’ ability to make the expected changes. The neglect arose from the fact that while leadership behaviour is observable and measurable, leadership mindset is hidden within the leaders’ psyche and is neither tangible nor observable. A leadership mindset is critical in employees’ productivity and their willingness to be creative to handle organisational challenges. Authors have identified emotional intelligence, connection, growth, and performance as management mindset (Mackay 2021) and how individuals see their capabilities (The Arbinger Institute 2016; Dweck 2006). Growth Institute (2018) identified the mindset change from individual performer to a leadership role. The individual deals with personal productivity, and there must be a shift from this mindset to a mindset of managing the performance of others. For example, Meyler (2018) identified the following mindset changes when people assume leadership positions: “growth, inclusive, agile, and enterprise mindsets” (pp.  1–2). However, this chapter looks at the leadership mindset arising from leaders’ understanding of leadership that affects how leaders relate and handle relationships with followers. To achieve this, the leadership mindset developed by Dweck (2006) and The Arbinger Institute (2016) was modified to obtain the definition of leadership mindset used in this book chapter. According to The Arbinger Institute (2016), leaders who understand leadership as conferring status or a means for service would have internal and external leadership mindsets, respectively. The focus of leaders with an internal mindset is the self, what the leader wants, and the power and authority they can get. External mindset focuses on followers

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Table 11.1  Consequences of the internal and external mindset Internal mindset

External mindset

Narrow-minded possibilities Operates only within the narrow self-interest Has low opinion of others Has low emotional intelligence Sees others as objects to be used and dumped when not required

Considers wide and better possibilities Sees beyond self and operates outside the narrow self-interest Views others positively Has high emotional intelligence Sees others as human beings to be developed and appreciated

Source: Amah, 2020, p. 149

and what the leader can do to enhance the ability of the followers to give out superior performance willingly. Externally mindset leaders are concerned with the quality of relationships with followers and the organisational climate they create as a context of employee performance. Amah (2020, p. 149) captured the difference between the internal and external mindset in Table 11.1. According to Dweck (2006), growth and fixed mindset arise when leaders understand leadership as an opportunity to serve or acquire status respectively. As understood in this chapter, a growth mindset has two implications in leadership: the leaders subscribe to the fact that they do not have an exclusive right to intelligence, creativity, and ability but that these are widely distributed across followers; the leader’s role is to ensure the development of followers to increase their intelligence and creativity and capability continuously. The growth-minded leader sees a positive relationship with followers as an asset that must be developed and nurtured since it is the basis for the trust and commitment of employees to the leader’s vision. Thus, the growth mindset sees intelligence, creativity, and ability as widely distributed and dynamic, and the role of the leader is always to maintain this dynamism to accommodate the ever-changing business environment. Similarly, a fixed mindset believes that intelligence, creativity, and capability are fixed and are limited to some people. The mindset believes those with these attributes advance to leadership while others follow orders. Two implications of the fixed mindset include: since leadership confers status, the leader believes that any change to be adopted must come from the leader and not the followers; followers must consistently

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reinforce the changes made by the leader. Tech Tello (n.d., p. 27) summarised the difference between the growth and fixed mindset in these words “Fixed mindset pulls us back and prevents us from realizing our full potential, while growth mindset makes us explore without being afraid of the challenges ahead.” Table 11.2 captures the broad difference between the two mindsets. Although Dweck (2006) and The Arbinger Institute (2016) developed the mindsets as standalone concepts, the chapter assumes that a better understanding of the leadership mindset can be obtained by combining the two approaches to defining leadership mindset. Figure 11.3 shows the

Table 11.2  Consequences of the fixed and growth mindset Fixed mindset (status)

Growth mindset (service)

Abilities and intelligence are defined by nature and cannot be improved

Abilities and intelligence can be modified by experience and must be encouraged Intelligence is restricted to certain Intelligence is widely distributed and people must be recognised and nurtured Only those who have the abilities and They vary from person to person and intelligence progress, while others are not restricted to certain people must follow their directives Does not allow freedom of thoughts Allows freedom of thought and beliefs and beliefs except when driven by since they are not the monopoly of the special few the leader Leaders resist change, especially The leader allows changes either from when such change does not come followers or from self since the leader from them or threatens their power believes he is not the sole custodian of base creativity and innovation Changes are allowed only if they The interest of the leader is not who come from the leader to fully designs the change but that the reinforce their belief that he is the implemented change leads to the custodian of creativity and development of the common goal innovation Seeks those who can reinforce his Seeks those who challenge him to grow self-esteem Focuses on outcomes since results are Cares about the outcome and the the primary interest of the leader means of achieving the same Ignores feedback since it challenges Accepts criticism as a way to learn and his superiority over others grow Source: Adapted from Dweck, 2006; Tech Tello n.d.

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Internal Mindset

Growth/Internal Mindset

Fixed/Internal Mindset

Growth Mindset

Fixed Mindset

Growth/External Mindset

Fixed/External Mindset

External Mindset Fig. 11.3  Categories of leadership mindset. (Source: Author)

resulting categorisations of mindsets arising from the assumption made in this chapter. Considering Fig. 11.3, the leadership mindsets fall into a continuum from fixed/internal mindset to growth/external mindset. Leaders rarely fall on the two extremes, but the closer a leader is to the growth/external end, the better the leadership mindset. However, leaders should always avoid the fixed/internal mindset since this mindset emphasis what the leader wants and desires without regard for the followers. Table 11.3 captures the differences between the four leadership mindsets. From Fig. 11.2, the organisational climate created by leadership behaviour drives employee productivity. Chapter 7 developed a set of leadership behaviour that can drive a positive organisational climate in the next normal. These behaviours fall into the soft and hard skills. Only the growth/external mindset can develop the soft skills listed in Chap. 6. This is because of the human nature of the mindset since it cares about people and accepts that followers have potential, which will be unleashed in a positive organisational climate.

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Table 11.3  Description of the four categories of leadership mindsets Fixed/internal

Fixed/external

Growth/internal

The leaders care In leadership for Leader emphasis self about themselves self and and those considered and do not allow demands to be an extension of for change respect from self. Selectively cares because no one others. It cares for people and outside the leader for only those develops them, but can initiate and in-group the people must be drive change. This members who those willing to mindset will will reinforce institutionalise the always make the leader’s ideas and creativity of followers rather authority. the leader. than leaders.

Growth/ external Believes that intelligence and skill are widely distributed. Cares for people because they have the willingness to drive creativity. The leader’s role is to create a positive climate that drives creativity and change initiated and driven by followers.

Source: Author

Research on Leadership Mindset Growth Institute (2018) discovered differences in the effectiveness of leaders with growth and fixed mindset. Leaders with fixed mindsets created climates characterised by fear, unmotivating, and micromanaging. In contrast, a growth mindset created climates that enhanced employee productivity, encouraged accountability and creativity, and drove superior business growth. The authors asserted that a growth mindset is created and nurtured through embracing change, especially from others, enhancing self-awareness, questioning deep-rooted values about human beings and relationships, having a positive attitude to failure, and

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perseverance in challenges. Past studies have also found a positive relationship between a growth mindset and employee performance (Hussain 2016). Leaders with a growth mindset are “growth-oriented, resilient, driven for action, future-focused, accountable, inclusive” (Dion 2017, pp. 2–7). Leaders with a growth mindset are usually humane because they use innate skills and lead from the point of “empathy, creativity, collaboration, communication, vulnerability and innovation” (Bhardwaj 2022, p. 1) and create a work climate that encourages trust, collaboration, and high value for people. They put a lot of effort into building human relationships because they realise their relationships with their followers drive performance. Growth mindset is associated with various performance measures such as achievement (Aronson et al. 2002; Burnette et al. 2013; Good et  al. 2003) and academic achievement (Aronson et  al. 2002; Bazelais et  al. 2018). Leaders with growth mindsets can adopt various leadership styles to handle situations (Kouzes and Posner 2019). Leaders with fixed mindsets experience life in terms of their intelligence, talent, and ability. In this way, they will avoid areas that fall outside their areas of competency and will not ask others for support (Yeager and Dweck 2012; Yeager et al. 2014). Teachers’ leadership mindset influences the performance and motivation of their students (Atwood 2010; Canning et al. 2019). Growth-minded leaders engage in behaviours that inspire and are driven by the belief that followers are malleable and can learn new things to enhance their capability (Dweck 2009; Yeager and Dweck 2012). Leaders with a growth mindset are conscious that they do not have answers to all issues but seek answers from their followers because they believe in them. They can easily suspend their preconceived ideas to listen to their subordinates. Other characteristics of growth-­ minded leaders include a “grateful mind, humble mind, willing mind” (Lafko 2022, p. 5).

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 eveloping and Nurturing Growth/External D Leadership Mindset There is debate on whether a leadership mindset is a permanent personality disposition or a temporary disposition capable of being changed (Caspi et al. 2005; Mäkikangas et al. 2013; McCrae and Costa 2003). Thus, it is within the nature-nurture controversy. However, the chapter aligns with the work of Dweck (2006) and The Arbinger Institute (2016) to the effect that a leadership mindset is not a permanent personality trait but can be modified. Certain variables have been identified as needed for modifying leadership mindsets, such as values that determine leaders’ attitudes to the human person and assumption of human nature, emotional intelligence, and core self-evaluation. According to Schwartz (1994), the value represents “desirable trans-situational goals varying in importance that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person or other social entity” (p. 21). Such values determine how we value human dignity and respect the dignity of every person, whether a leader or a follower. Values also determine our assumptions of human nature and individuals’ disposition to work and acquire intelligence. Leaders who want to acquire a growth/external mindset must question their deep disposition towards human dignity and human nature. Only leaders with a positive disposition to these variables, through their values, can develop and nurture a growth/external leadership mindset. Leaders with high emotional intelligence manage their emotions and that of their subordinates well. They also create a positive organisational climate that respects and values individuals and believes that individuals have the capability that can be developed and nurtured. A growth/external leadership mindset creates a positive organisational climate, so leaders with this mindset have high emotional intelligence. Core self-evaluation (CSE) is a composite multidimensional variable containing self-esteem, locus of control, generalised self-efficiency, and low neuroticism. Core self-evaluation dictates actions taken by leaders and also motivates the actions (Bono and Colbert, 2005; Bono and Judge, 2003). CSE enhances leadership effectiveness because leaders are emotionally stable and have an ongoing positive assessment of people and values, contributing to

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their growth and development. Leaders must monitor the levels of their CSE in all the components because a leader with a low score may need help to enact a growth/external leadership mindset. For example, a leader with low self-esteem has a low opinion of himself and cannot develop a high opinion of others.

Conclusion The book chapter built on previous chapters’ knowledge about leadership effectiveness. Leadership behaviour drives the organisational climate created by the leader, which drives the performance of employees. The chapter, however, argued that the surface factors identified in previous theorising do not describe the full scope of the leader’s effectiveness but that the leader’s hidden personal factors drive the type of behaviour a leader can enact. It is evident from the chapter that hidden personal factors can make it impossible for some leaders to enact acceptable behaviour that drives performance, no matter the level of training they receive. Two factors were discussed, namely, understanding of leadership and leadership mindset. The understanding of leadership is described as the reason or what the leader wants from being a leader. People become leaders because they see it as a means to acquire status and associated power or to serve employees to give their best to the organisation. The two ways of understanding leadership will give rise to different leadership mindsets. The chapter described two approaches to categorising leadership mindset: internal or external and growth or fixed mindsets. Leaders who see leadership as a means to acquire status, power, and authority will subscribe to internal and fixed mindsets, while those who see it as a means to serve will subscribe to external and growth mindsets. Instead of treating these categories as independent, the book chapter combined them to identify different leadership mindsets that drive the behaviour of leaders. These are fixed/internal, fixed/external, growth/internal, and growth/ external. Leaders must avoid the fixed/internal because this mindset emphasis only what the leader wants, even at the expense of relationships with followers and what is good for them. The leader is the focus of leadership enactment. This type of leader only has the internal motivation to

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address followers’ issues, when doing so will reinforce the leader’s power and authority. For example, the leader will find it challenging to adjust leadership behaviour to accommodate the followers’ changing characteristics because followers are not a priority in enacting leadership. However, leaders should work towards growth/external because the growth portion allows the leader to see the potential in followers and the fact that they can make valuable contributions. The external portion means that the leader cares about people and will do whatever is required to create a favourable climate for followers to give their best to the leader and the organisation. These mindsets are not hereditary but can be developed. Human values, assumptions of human nature, respect for the dignity of the human person, a leader’s emotional intelligence, and core self-evaluation are variables that can help develop and nurture a good leadership mindset. For example, a leader must have an optimistic assumption of human beings and respect their dignity to enact the growth/external mindset. Previous chapters have identified the appropriate leadership model for the next normal. Still, the chapter advanced this to identify the appropriate leadership mindset to drive the stated model.

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Lencioni, P. 2020. The Motive: Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities. John Wiley & Sons. Mackay, A. 2021. An HR Expert Outlines the Traits that Make Certain Individuals More Successful than Others When it Comes to Leading a Team. https://www.hcamag.com/nz/news/general/opinion-­the-­four-­mindsets-­of-­ leaders/144485. Mäkikangas, A., T. Feldt, U. Kinnunen, and S. Mauno. 2013. Does Personality Matter? A Review of Individual Differences in Occupational Well-being. In Advances in Positive Organizational Psychology, ed. A.B.  Bakker, vol. 1, 107–143. Emerald. Meyler, J. 2018. Shifting Your Mindset-The Four Leadership Attitudes to Adopt Right Away. https://www.gpstrategies.com/blog/shifting-­your-­mindset-­the-­ four-­leadership-­attitudes-­to-­adopt-­right-­away/#:~:text=We%20believe%20 four%20elemental%20leadership,being%20a%20successful%20leader%20 today. McCrae, R. R., and Costa, P. T. Jr. 2003. Personality in adulthood: A Five-Factor theory perspective (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. Ngambi, H.C. 2011. Rare Total Leadership: Leading with the Heart and Hands. Juta. Schwartz, S.H. 1994. Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values? Journal of Social Issues 50: 19–45. https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-­4560.1994.tb01196.x. Tech Tello. n.d. Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset: How to Shift to a Path of Learning. https://www.techtello.com/fixed-­mindset-­vs-­growth-­mindset/. The Arbinger Institute. 2016. The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves. USA: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. UKEssays. 2018, November. Concepts of Leadership | An Overview. https:// www.ukessays.com/essays/business/what-­i s-­y our-­u nderstanding-­o f-­ leadership-­and-­thegeneral-­concepts-­of-­leadership-­business-­essay.php?vref=1. Yeager, D.S., and C.S. Dweck. 2012. Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can be Developed. Educational Psychologist 47 (4): 302–314. Yeager, D.S., R.  Johnson, B.J.  Spitzer, K.H.  Trzesniewski, J.  Powers, and C.S.  Dweck. 2014. The Far-Reaching Effects of Believing People Can Change: Implicit Theories of Personality Shape Stress, Health, and Achievement During Adolescence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106: 867–884.

12 Conclusion and Epilogue

Conclusion In recent times, the phenomenon of leadership has assumed considerable significance. The key question “What makes an effective leader?” continues to daunt researchers. (King 1990)

From the quotation above, what an effective leader is, continues to challenge researchers in various eras of leadership theorising. This is because the answer is not constant across all the eras in the management of organisations. Whether major or minor, disruption has always been found to re-direct the answer to the questions. COVID-19 is a significant disruption that changed the course of organisations and how leaders can be effective. What makes an effective leader in the next normal will rely on the results of the exploration of leadership in past eras. Part 1 of the book reviews the pre-industrial and industrial eras and the classical and neoclassical eras. The review indicated that leadership started as a one-dimensional construct where only the leader‘s personality and behaviour were considered the drivers of effective leadership behaviour. In the neoclassical era, leadership as a dyadic relation became the dominant theory. In this theorising, leadership was seen as effective at the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6_12

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nexus of leaders, followers, and situations involved in leadership enactment. The industrial revolution was the first disruption that necessitated conceptualising leadership differently. The leader was the leading actor because of the perceived role of the leader in driving organisational productivity. The results of the Hawthorn studies led to the human relations school, which also needed re-conceptualising leadership. In this era, the dyadic relationship between the leader and employees became the primary factor that drove leadership effectiveness. King (1990, p. 50) highlighted five critical issues that drive leadership effectiveness and must be recognised by leaders: • Leadership is complex, interactive behavioural relationship, and situational. • Leadership is dispersed among the leader, individual, dyadic, group, and all levels of the organisation. • Leadership is not only from top to bottom but can occur from bottom to top. • Leadership happens at the leader-subordinate interaction, so the interaction quality matters. • Leaders can motivate either through the intrinsic or extrinsic way. The author concluded that until there is a new leadership framework, “it will not be possible to understand” the answers posed on leadership effectiveness. Part 2 was based on the assumption that COVID-19 presented a disruption like the other two disruptions discussed in Part 1 and that it can re-direct the search for leadership effectiveness. The first section of Part 2 reviewed the leadership skills that drove positive interaction between the leader and subordinate, which gave employees positive work experience and, ultimately, superior performance. How the leader handled operational efficiency also contributed to the quality of the dyadic relationship between subordinates and leaders. Part 3 built on the findings in COVID-19 studies to understand leadership in the black box known as the “next normal.” The chapter was based on the results from a qualitative study that sought to understand

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what practitioners, leadership scholars, employees, and HR professionals think leadership would be in the next normal. The aim is to discover the leadership behaviours from COVID-19 that are relevant post-COVID and new behaviours that are also needed post-COVID. The results highlighted the behaviours needed to succeed in leadership in the next normal (see Fig. 7.1). It is understood that the main driver of leadership effectiveness in the next normal is the quality of the leader‘s interactions with all the elements in the nexus of leadership enactment. The skills involved the soft skills used to build relationships and the hard skills that build processes. However, there was a consensus that soft skills should be higher in the scale of preference of leadership success variables. Part 4 is based on the assumption that the model developed in Part 3 was defective since nothing was said about the hidden drivers of leadership behaviour. The last part assumed that the theory of leadership was the foundation of leadership behaviour, and if leaders become aware, they could make necessary changes to make their role effective. A good choice by the leader was assumed to lead to a positive organisational climate which would drive employee performance. Some leadership developers had insinuated that the outcome of leadership development was not sustained because they believed that a hidden factor made it difficult for leaders to sustain the outcome of leadership development. The first section of Part 4 discussed the hidden factors, understanding of leadership, and leadership mindset. Understanding of leadership was explained as why the leader wanted to be in a leadership role. In contrast, a leadership mindset is associated with beliefs and values that eventually drive leadership behaviour (the external and observable) variable in leadership development. The chapter developed a continuum of leadership mindsets from fixed/internal to growth/external mindsets. Growth/external mindset drives leadership behaviours that can lead to leadership effectiveness. King (1990) had recommended before COVID that the tenth era and the integrative era in leadership will “add further variables that will broaden our understanding of leadership while retaining theoretical constructs that are currently well understood” (p. 50).

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Epilogue COVID-19 disruption caused a significant change in the management of organisations and people. Leaders respond in diverse ways depending on their leadership disposition. Wineinger (2021) listed the diverse responses as self-protective, fight-flight-freeze, and hunker down. However, it is recommended to confront the challenges and not adopt the fight-flight-­ freeze response. Gerdeman (2021) recognised that no leader should expect that in the next normal, the work structure will be as in the old normal pre-COVID. Three significant decisions will be needed in searching for effective leadership in the next normal. The first decision is what work structure to adopt post-COVID, which employees will return to the office, work from home, or hybrid work. Since leadership enactment operates in a nexus of many elements, the decisions must not be made by leaders alone but collectively aimed at getting the perspectives of all organisational participants. Leadership is at the centre of initiating and driving the process of collective decision-making that must be data-driven. The preferred work structure should create employees that are happy and productive. To achieve this, the organisation must have honest discussions with employees to arrive at the preferred work structure that accommodates employee preferences and considers the organisational effectiveness. For example, some processes must be performed in the office alone, and others can be moved to online or hybrid. Two-way communication aimed at discussing skills required and skills employees possess, and how they prefer to work will satisfy the organisation’s and the employee’s expectations. Leaders must also be sensitive to a probable increase in the levels of stress and burnout associated with working remotely identified by studies (see Amah 2023). This author identified that employees with a low-stress level while working remotely managed the blurred interface between work and the family, and leaders supported the employees’ segregation orientation. The question is, what type of leader will allow this collective decision-­ making? From what was discussed in Chap. 11, a leader who is in leadership to acquire status and power and with a fixed/internal mindset cannot drive this because of poor regard for people, the assumption that leader

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knows it all, and the love for power and control. The leader in leadership to serve will have a growth/external mindset that can drive this process because the leader believes that others are gifted and are willing to contribute if provided with a suitable organisational climate. The second decisions include reviewing whether the existing strategies and procedures will fit the preferred work structure post-COVID. Are there modifications to be made in HRM policies to accommodate the various work structures adopted post-COVID? For example, online workers will not commute to work but will require an office in their homes. This fact has significant implications for HRM policies. The third decision is how to maximise employees’ productivity in the various work structures and what type of leader would drive the variations in how employees are managed in the many work structures to achieve optimal productivity. For example, those working in the office will have face-to-face supervision, but those working from home will be managed in other ways. Wineinger (2021) listed the skills required by post-COVID leadership to include “self-awareness, listening skills, empowered conversation, high-performance team dynamic, feedback, and communication” (p. 3). Not all leadership mindsets can drive these behaviours. McCauley and Palus (2021, p. 4) summarised the new face of leadership; thus, “the Leader is not the fundamental source of leadership, but the leadership is an emergent property of interactions among people working together.” The authors further articulated the relational view of leadership and the democratisation of leadership instead of the contained leadership as drivers of the new face of leadership. Kerrissey and Edmondson (2020) stated that leaders have the natural inclination to act protectively in uncertainty, but what is required are “acting with urgency, communicating with transparency, taking responsibility and focusing in problem-solving, and engaging in constant updating” (p. 5). Chiumento (2020) stated that there are core skills that leaders must borrow from the past and that the post-COVID would require additional skills for leadership effectiveness. The author listed the additional skills as the ability to handle the changes caused by digitisation, developing and maintaining competitive advantage using people, and resilience. Korn Ferry (2020) interviewed several CEOs and found out that to manage effectively, they adopted certain behaviours, including open-mindedness,

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thinking out loud, having a sense of humour even in challenges, empowering people to think independently, resilience, recognising the push/pull paradox and effectively resolving the same, action-oriented and reflective, identifying and monitoring mindset, being courageous, and thinking in terms of both short-term and long-term and the paradox in them. According to Rossetto (2021), COVID-19 revealed that leaders must lead with empathy, identify the right innovation, and give meaning to their people in the next normal. Empathy will position the leader to care about employees and appreciate what they are going through and what they want. These will drive the level of meaning given to employees. Innovation should be seen from the process/product innovation angle and how stakeholders are valued. The findings above and those in the rest of the book gave rise to the future leadership model developed in this chapter. The model for leadership effectiveness proposed in this book is in Fig.  12.1. Sections A–B is the hidden/unobserved variables that drive leadership behaviour. While sections C–G are external/observed variables currently in use in the modern Leadership development model. This model postulates that effective leadership behaviour must create an engaging organisational climate that drives employees’ positive work experiences. In such a climate, employees become highly engaged and

B: Growth/External Mindset

C:

D:

E:

Leadership behaviours (see Figure ---)

Positive & engaging organisational climate.

Positive work experience for employees

A: Leader is in the leadership role to serve. A-B: Internal/ unobservable variables

F: C-G: External/ Observable variables

Engaged employees. G: Superior organisational performance

Fig. 12.1  Model of leadership effectiveness. (Source: Author)

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give their best to produce superior and sustainable organisational productivity. The model also realised that leadership behaviour is driven by hidden factors, namely when the leader is in the role to serve, which drives growth/eternal leadership mindset. The mindset is not hereditary but can be initiated and developed. Past studies have developed a positive relationship between the growth/eternal mindset with important employees and organisational variables (Aronson et al. 2002; Bazelais et al. 2018; Burnette et al. 2013; Good et al. 2003; Kouzes and Posner 2019; Yeager and Dweck 2012; Yeager et  al. 2014). The leadership mindset is on a continuum from fixed/internal to growth/external. Future research should be directed in two directions: establishing appropriate measures for other mindsets in the continuum and testing the entire or part of the model.

References Amah, O.E. 2023. Linking the Covid-19 Work Experience of SMEs Employees to Post Covid-19 Superior Productivity of SMEs. Journal of the International Council for Small Business 4 (2): 128–142. Aronson, J., C.B. Fried, and C. Good. 2002. Reducing the Effects of Stereotype Threat on African American College Students by Shaping Theories of Intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38: 113–125. https:// doi.org/10.1006/jesp.2001.1491. Bazelais, P., D.J.  Lemay, and T.  Doleck. 2018. Examining the Link Between Prior Achievement in Secondary Education and Performance in College: Using Data from Pre-University Physics Courses. Journal of Formative Design in Learning. Advance online publication 2: 114–120. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s41686-­018-­0020-­x. Burnette, J.L., E.H. Oboyle, E.M. Vanepps, J.M. Pollack, and E.J. Finkel. 2013. Mind-sets Matter: A Meta-analytic Review of Implicit Theories and Self-­ regulation. Psychological Bulletin 139 (3): 655–701. https://doi. org/10.1037/a0029531. Chiumento, R. 2020. What Does a Future Leader Look Like Post-Covid-19? The Digital Transformation People. https://www.thedigitaltransformationpeople.com/channels/people-­and-­change/what-­does-­a-­future-­leader-­look-­like-­ post-­covid-­19/.

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Ferry, K. 2020. The Covid-19 Leadership Guide: Strategies for Managing Through Crisis. https://www.kornferry.com/content/dam/kornferry/special-­ project-­i mages/coronavirus/docs/KF_Leadership_Playbook_Global_ FINAL.pdf. Gerdeman, D. 2021. Covid Killed the Traditional Workplace: What Should Companies Do Now? Harvard Business Review https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/ covid-­killed-­the-­traditional-­workplace-­what-­should-­companies-­do-­now. Good, C., J.  Aronson, and M.  Inzlicht. 2003. Improving Adolescents’ Standardized Test Performance: An Intervention to Reduce the Effects of Stereotype Threat. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 24: 645–662. Kerrissey, M.J. and A.C. Edmondson. 2020. What Good Leadership Looks Like During This Pandemic. Harvard Business School April 13. https://hbr. org/2020/04/what-­good-­leadership-­looks-­like-­during-­this-­pandemic. King, A.S. 1990. Evolution of Leadership Theory. Vikalpa: The Journal of decision Makers 15 (2): 43–54. Kouzes, T.K., and B.Z.  Posner. 2019. Influence of Managers’ Mindset on Leadership Behavior. Leadership & Organization Development Journal 40 (8): 829–844. McCauley, C., and C.J.  Palus. 2021. Developing the Theory and Practice of Leadership Development: A Relational View. The Leadership Quarterly 32: 5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101456. Rossetto, C. 2021. Taking the Next Step: Three Things Covid-19 Taught us About Leadership in a Post-pandemic World. APCO Worldwide. https:// apcoworldwide.com/blog/taking-­t he-­n ext-­s tep-­t hree-­t hings-­c ovid-­1 9-­ taught-­us-­about-­leadership-­in-­a-­post-­pandemic-­world/. Wineinger, C. 2021. Leadership in the Post-Covid World. American Management Association. https://www.amanet.org/articles/leadership-­in-­ the-­post-­covid-­world/. Yeager, D.S., and C.S. Dweck. 2012. Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can be Developed. Educational Psychologist 47 (4): 302–314. Yeager, D.S., R.  Johnson, B.J.  Spitzer, K.H.  Trzesniewski, J.  Powers, and C.S. Dweck. 2014. The Far-reaching Effects of Believing People Can Change: Implicit Theories of Personality Shape Stress, Health, and Achievement During Adolescence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106: 867–884.

Index

A

Adaptive, 93 Affluent societies, 15 Agenda-setting theory, 135, 136 Agents and managers, 20 Agility, 52, 56, 62, 65, 66, 93, 97, 173, 179, 184 Alienated from work, 15 Alienation, 1, 2, 17, 18, 22, 24 Anxiety, 89 Architecture, 6, 52, 56–61, 67, 71, 74, 76, 77, 169, 172, 173, 177, 178, 183, 185, 188 Attitudes, 29, 31, 38, 92, 195, 205 Authentic, 43 Authenticity, 93 Authority, 39, 41, 88, 89, 92, 162, 198, 199, 203, 206

Autocratic, 22 Autonomy, 15, 92 Avoid inequity, 94 B

Behavioural aspects of operations management, 4 Behavioural Sciences, 37 Black box, 1, 2, 5, 105, 109, 116, 212 Blake, R.R., 40, 41 managerial grid, 30 Bottom-line performance, 5, 79, 105 Bottom-up, 40 Bounded optimism, 90 Business environments, 73, 178

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 O. E. Amah, M. Ogah, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness Post-COVID-19, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32763-6

219

220 Index C

Calculative, 1 Caring for others, 152 Change, vii, 1, 2, 32, 35, 36, 41, 43, 52, 58, 61, 71, 77, 80, 85, 87–89, 94, 96, 98, 107, 111, 115, 130, 137, 138, 151, 154, 172, 174, 175, 183, 196, 199–201, 203, 214 Children, 15, 18–20, 24 Classical, 11–15, 22, 23, 31, 37, 38, 43, 44 Classical Theory, 12–15, 31, 38, 39 Cognitive-driven decision, 88 Co-leadership, 151 Collaboration, 25, 35, 36, 43, 58, 73, 75, 88, 89, 98, 99, 107, 109, 112, 113, 116, 132, 179, 186, 204 Collaborative, 73, 77, 93, 94, 111, 178 Collective, 24, 42, 94, 172, 214 Collective intelligence, 25 Common interest, 37, 42 Communication, 31, 36, 70, 75, 88, 89, 93–95, 99, 109, 112, 113, 116, 148, 149, 157, 162, 196, 197, 204, 214, 215 Community, 3, 21, 23, 110, 126, 130, 154, 171, 179 Compassion, 93 Compelling vision, 88 Competition, 21, 23 Competitive advantage, 51, 58, 66, 86, 137, 149, 171, 172, 179, 184, 185, 215 Condition of service, 18 Conflict between work and family, 15

Consequence-based ethics, 157 Consumerism, 39 Contingency, 36, 40, 96 Continuum of work and leisure, 44 Coordination, 20, 94, 116 Core principles, 42 Core self-evaluation (CSE), 205, 207 Corporate scandals, 5, 41, 105 Craft the future, 11, 43 Creativity, 52, 93, 98, 187, 200, 201, 203, 204 Crisis management, 89, 112, 113 Critical theory principles, 9 Cultural and transformational, 40 Culture, 9, 52, 55, 59, 68, 69, 75, 80, 81, 98, 112, 113, 153, 154, 158–160, 162, 172–175, 177–181, 184, 186, 188 D

Decision-making, 14, 34, 87, 95, 97, 149, 155, 156, 214 DEI, see Diversity, equity and inclusion Democratic, 38, 93 Design thinking, 67, 69, 70 Developing economies, 4, 49, 60, 77 Develop talent, 93 Digitisation, 57, 61, 62, 77, 172, 178, 181, 183, 215 Digitised technology, 57 Disruption, vii, 4, 6, 36, 49, 51, 54–57, 65–67, 69, 71, 74, 75, 80, 81, 85, 86, 90, 169, 178, 183, 186, 187, 195, 211, 212, 214 Disruptive effect of, 4, 9

 Index 

Distributed, 18, 23, 87, 89, 93, 149, 152, 162, 200, 201, 203 Distributed leadership, 151 Diversity, 40, 41, 93, 113, 134, 154, 173 Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI), xi, 93, 113, 154 Division of labour, 17, 18, 24, 31, 53 DNA, xi, 71 Domestic system, 15, 16, 19, 21–24, 43 Drivers of this effectiveness, 14 Duty-based, 157 E

Early industrial revolution, 9 Economic measures, 131, 133–136 Economic parameters, 5, 105 Economic social and environmental, 3, 5, 105, 108, 138 Effectiveness, vii, 1–6, 21, 32, 35, 39, 40, 44, 49, 51–62, 73, 76, 85–99, 105, 112, 115, 116, 125–139, 150, 154, 169, 172, 187, 193–195, 197–199, 203, 205, 206, 212, 213, 215, 216 Efficiency, vii, 3, 12, 17–20, 36, 52, 60, 61, 66–69, 76, 97, 108, 111, 117, 134, 171, 172, 175, 205, 212 Emancipatory reflection, 10 Emergent technologies, 51, 55–59, 69, 70, 75, 76, 81, 172, 178, 181 Emerging technologies, 57

221

Emotional and psychological needs of the workers, 12 Emotional and psychological satisfaction, 25 Emotional fortitude, 89 Emotional intelligence, 21, 89, 95, 98, 199, 200, 205, 207 Emotionally, 94, 205 Emotions and psychology, 13 Empathetic, 24, 36, 90, 98 Empathy, 20, 21, 24, 44, 91–94, 112, 116, 196, 204, 216 Empirical studies, 86, 96, 99, 109, 116 Employee engagement, 71, 92 Employees, viii, 2, 5, 17, 30–35, 40, 44, 65, 66, 68–71, 79, 86–92, 94, 97, 99, 105, 108–110, 112–114, 116, 117, 131, 133–135, 147, 149, 152, 153, 156, 157, 160–162, 172, 174–180, 183, 188, 193–195, 199, 200, 206, 212–216 Employers, 2, 19, 92, 111 Empowerment, 2 Enactment of leadership, 22, 30, 95, 149, 197 Environment, 3, 5, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21, 22, 31, 32, 34, 37–39, 44, 52, 57, 58, 66, 68, 78, 87, 93, 94, 96–98, 105, 111, 112, 114, 126, 128, 130–132, 138, 150, 153, 154, 160, 173, 177, 187, 200 Environmental and business uncertainties, 87

222 Index

Equity, 3, 93, 97, 113, 134, 149, 152, 154, 162 Espoused values, 40 Estrangement, 1 Ethical, 3, 5, 106, 116, 126, 128, 131, 139, 147–162 character, 148 manager, 158–162 person, 152, 154, 158, 160–162 scandals, 161 violation, 159 Evolutionary trend, 1, 40, 41 Evolution of leadership theories, 2, 40 Evolution of the work system, 3, 9 Exchange process, 15 Execution, 15, 20, 21, 24, 31, 59, 60, 73, 87, 98, 177, 178, 180, 184, 187 Expectancy theory, 33 Expertise, 12, 18, 20, 21, 24, 61, 77, 95, 151 Exploratory, 86, 96, 99, 109, 115, 116 Extrinsically, 41 F

Face-to-face, 88, 112, 215 Factory, vii, 1, 15–18, 20–22, 24, 29, 36, 43, 86, 132 Factory system, vii, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 29, 43, 86 Family, 1, 15–18, 20, 22–24, 30, 36, 88, 92, 110, 214 leadership structure, 15 wealth, 15

Fast problem-solving, 89 Father was the head, 15 Feedback, 34, 72, 89, 201, 215 Fixed/external, 206 Fixed/internal, 202, 206, 213, 214, 217 Flattened structure, 88 Flexible, 58, 61, 77, 93, 98, 151, 179 Followers, 1, 12, 23, 42, 43, 98, 149–152, 156, 193, 196, 197, 199–204, 206, 212 Formal, 36, 38, 39, 151 Framework, 2, 53, 55, 61, 65–67, 77, 78, 131, 173–175, 179–181, 198, 212 Framework in leadership, 2 Future of leadership, viii, 9, 40, 85, 86, 99, 108, 111, 115, 161, 193 Future operations, 57 G

Global business, 53, 54, 58, 76, 185, 187 Global disruptions, 55, 65, 68, 75, 173 Global economic equation, 76 Great man, 25, 30 Group, 14, 23, 25, 29, 31, 34–36, 40, 94, 113, 126, 152, 159, 203, 212 Group dynamics, 31 Growth/external, 202, 205–207, 213, 215, 217 Growth/internal, 206

 Index  H

Hard skills, 95, 97, 117, 193, 202, 213 Hawthorne Studies, 31, 36, 37, 86 Hidden drivers, 3, 6, 169, 195, 213 Hierarchy, 33, 41 Honour, 152 Hopelessness, 20, 36 Household members, 19, 20 HRM policies, 215 Human behaviour in the organisation, 2 Human capital, 4, 6, 49, 51, 54, 57–61, 65, 67–71, 75, 77, 79, 93, 126, 169, 172–173, 175, 180, 184 Human dignity, 37, 205 Human element, 38, 52, 57, 60, 67, 69, 76, 77, 79, 86, 114, 172, 174, 175, 178, 184, 185 Human intelligence, 78 Human involvement, 67 Human person, 34, 205, 207 Human relation approach, 31 Human relations eras, 3, 9 Human relationship movement, 18 Human Relations Theory, 2, 32, 34–39

223

Industrial revolution, 12, 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 36, 53, 86, 184, 212 Industrial society, 36 Industrial study, 12 Industrial unit, 36 Influence, 6, 40, 54, 57, 59, 65, 79, 95, 126, 131, 136, 169, 172, 195–197 Informal, 35–39 Informal groups, 31, 35 Innovation, 4, 49, 52, 54, 57–59, 61, 67–69, 80, 81, 98, 131, 174, 187, 201, 204, 216 Input-driven cost reduction, 21 Integrity, 42, 97, 152, 153, 155, 196 Intelligent, 94 Interdisciplinary approach, 35 Internal and external customers, 55, 57 Internal cohesion, 43 Internet of Things (IoT), xi, 55, 76, 77, 181 Intrinsically, 41 Irrational behaviours, 91 J

Job satisfaction, 37 L

I

Identification, 93 Inclusion, 13, 93, 113, 134, 154 Inclusiveness, 77, 108, 116 Individual well-being, 19 Industrial era, 1, 15, 19, 22, 36, 43 Industrial organisation, 9

Labour for wages, 19 Leader, 3, 4, 12, 13, 17, 21–23, 29, 32, 40–44, 49, 57, 65, 78, 88, 91, 92, 94, 98, 109, 117, 128, 134, 148, 149, 151–154, 156, 157, 159–162, 182, 193–203, 205–207, 211–215, 217

224 Index

Leadership, vii, 1–6, 9, 11–13, 15, 20–24, 29, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40–44, 49, 51–62, 65, 66, 68–70, 72–74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 85–89, 91–99, 105–107, 109, 111–118, 130, 131, 133–136, 139, 147–162, 169, 175, 177, 178, 180–184, 187, 193–207, 211–216 mindset, 3, 6, 115, 139, 169, 195–199, 201, 202, 204–207, 213, 217 practices, 88 styles, 2, 3, 5, 38, 40–42, 44, 66, 93, 98, 99, 105, 153, 178, 193, 196, 199, 204 succession, 22 thoughts, 11, 85 Legitimacy theories, 135 Leisure, 19, 43, 88 Leisure-income choice, 19 Long-term relevant strategies, 90

Mother, 15 Motivation, 15, 21, 30–35, 67, 68, 79, 93, 177, 204, 206 Motivational theories, 33, 34 Mouton, J.S., 40, 41 managerial grid, 30 Multi-culturalism, 39 Mutuality of interest, 37 Mutual respect, 152

M

O

Management concept, 11 Management consultants, 99 Management System, 37 Manpower, 72 Market dynamics, 80 Maslow, A.H., 33 hierarchy, 33 Mechanistic view, 12, 38 Merchants, 16, 17, 19–23, 29 Metamorphosed, 53 Mill spinning department, 31 Monotonous, 18

Operate in a vacuum, 12 Operating system, 78, 180, 181 Operational architectures, 4, 6, 49, 54, 77, 169, 172, 183, 186 Operational economics, 76 Operational excellence, 4, 49, 56, 67, 69–71, 77, 81, 169, 171–182, 184–186, 188 Operational leadership, 4, 49, 52, 58, 60, 61, 65–81, 181, 184 Operational matrix, 77 Operational service, 4, 49

N

Nature of work, vii, 44, 55, 76, 109 Negotiation, 89 Neoclassical, 11, 24, 25, 39, 43, 44 Networked leadership, 93 Next normal, viii, 2, 5, 97, 105, 108, 113–117, 195, 202, 207, 211, 212, 214, 216 Nexus, 40, 175, 177, 195, 212–214 Nine eras, 40 Novel operating tools, 59

 Index 

Operations, 4–6, 17, 30, 49, 51–62, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72–74, 76–80, 90, 105, 112, 126, 130, 133, 135, 138, 148, 169, 172–174, 176–178, 180, 181, 183–187 Operations management, 4, 6, 49, 51–62, 67, 77, 79, 169 Optimal use of resources, 37 Organisational behaviour, 5, 31, 32, 35, 37–39, 42, 105 Organisational effectiveness, 5, 14, 35, 105, 134, 135, 214 Organisational measures of success, 86 Organisational outcomes, 43 Organisational parameters for success, 86 Organisational performance, 5, 105 Organisational resources, 52, 66, 87, 149 Organisation as a System, 37 Organisation’s history, 42 Organisation’s structure, 13 Organisation’s values, 90, 92 P

Pandemic, 87, 89, 92, 94, 109, 116 Paradigm shift, 51, 58, 69, 71, 74, 98, 129, 131, 149, 161, 172, 181, 183 Participation, 2, 34, 36, 37, 70, 177 Participative, 22 Participatory, 24 Paternal structure, 15 Pathway, 21, 107 Patriarchal authority, 17

225

Pattern-driven, 88 Per Capita, 21, 24 Performance management processes, 71 Personality, 40, 205, 211 Piecemeal, 12 Plan-driven, 97 Planners of work, 14 Point of inflection, 99 Political, 36, 87, 198 Popular press, 85, 86, 115, 116 Power structure, 9 Practitioners, viii, 2, 40, 85, 86, 98, 99, 116, 117, 213 Pre-industrial, 3, 9, 15, 19, 22, 35, 36, 43, 211 Principles of management, 13 Process flows, 56, 73, 174 Process standardisation, 20 Productivity, 1, 2, 4, 12–15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 40, 42–44, 49, 58, 69, 70, 95, 98, 99, 106, 109, 114, 116, 117, 129, 130, 134, 137, 157, 178, 195, 196, 198, 199, 202, 203, 212, 215, 217 Profitability, 87, 126, 138, 147, 148 Psychological processes, 35 Purpose-driven, 97, 111 Purpose unleashed, 111 Putting-out system, 15, 16, 22–24 Q

Qualitative research, 2, 193 Quality work circles, 152

226 Index R

Raw materials, 16, 17, 29 Relational and situational elements, 40 Researchers, 2, 40, 85, 86, 98, 115, 127, 130, 135, 156, 160, 198, 211 Resilience, 53 Resilient leaders, 89 Resource planning, 54 Results of their efforts, 15 Role of human beings, 12 S

Scarce resources, 4, 49, 51, 66, 67, 79 Scenario planning, 59, 185 Schools of thought, 14, 52, 80, 173–175, 178 Scientific Management, 11, 13, 14, 21, 37 Segregation orientation, 92, 214 Self-actualisation, 33 Self-interested, 1 Servant leadership, 43, 66 Service delivery, 55, 183 Shared and inclusive leadership, 22 Shareholder, 5, 90, 105, 135, 139 Short-term push, 90 Short-term survival, 89, 90, 136, 138, 147 Silo-mentality, 74 Situational leadership style, 30, 40 Skilled workforce, 81 Smart work, 98 Social and psychological aspects of workers’ behaviour, 12 Social beings, 31 Social bonds, 2, 30

Social context, 10, 22 Social or private properties, 87 Society, 5, 9, 29, 36, 105, 126, 128, 132, 136, 138, 155, 171 Socioeconomic, 87, 94 Sociology and psychology, 21 Soft skills, 89, 95, 96, 99, 107, 108, 111–113, 116, 158, 193, 202, 213 Sources of revenue, 16 Specialisation, 20 Spontaneous cooperation, 36 Stakeholders, viii, 2, 3, 5, 72, 74, 77, 90, 93, 94, 99, 105, 109, 114, 115, 126–129, 132–139, 149, 153, 154, 157, 161, 216 Steam engine, 53 Stress, 88, 89, 92, 214 Structure of work, viii, 6, 22, 169, 195 Subordinates, 30, 41, 88, 89, 92, 108, 156, 204, 205, 212 Sub-Saharan Africa, 67–69, 72–81, 173 Supervisors, 2, 17 Sustainability, 53, 56, 108, 115, 116, 125–131, 133–138, 154, 162, 171, 173, 176 Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), xi, 3, 6, 125–139, 147–163 Sustainable alliances, 51 SWOT analyses, 59 T

Taylorism, 12 TBL indicators, 134 Team building, 89, 93

 Index 

Team leadership, 151 Tenth era, 41, 213 Theory X, 32 Theory Y, 32 Top-bottom, 40 Top-down response, 89 Total self, 88 Trainers, 71, 116 Trait theories, 25 Transactional, 18, 40, 111, 153 Transformation, 10, 51, 60, 61, 66–68, 70, 78, 79, 81, 107, 112, 177, 181, 188 Transformational conduit, 52 Transformational infrastructure, 77 Transformational leadership, 43 Transformed social praxis, 10 Triple bottom-line (TBL), xi, 125, 130–137 Triple-bottom-line measures, 3, 5, 105, 106 Trust, 78, 88, 95, 98, 99, 113, 116, 153, 154, 156, 161, 200, 204 Turnover, 31, 34, 37 U

Uncertain environment, 88 Underperformance, 1, 29 Understanding leadership, vii, 3, 6, 41, 43, 115, 169, 195, 198, 199, 206, 213

227

Understand leadership in COVID-19, 4, 9 Unions, 18 United Nations, xi, 3, 5, 105, 106, 126, 128–130 Unknown unknown, 108 V

Value-based leadership, 40, 41, 44 Value-based theories, 25 Value chains, 56, 179, 185, 187 Values and beliefs, 136 Value systems, 42 Virtual, 88, 91 Virtue ethics, 148, 156, 162 W

War between talents, 111 Weber-Bureaucracy, 37 Well-being, 5, 18, 20, 22–24, 31, 37, 42, 43, 60, 89, 93, 98, 105, 108, 109, 113, 126, 128–130, 138, 139, 179 Work as fashion, 111 Work design, 89, 91 Workflow planning, 20 Work groups, 36 Work is work, 111 Work-life balance, 89, 109