Repentance and Continuous Improvement: Ethical Implications for the Modern Leader

Caldwell, Cam; Dixon, Rolf D.; Atkins, Ryan; Dowdell, Stefan M.

doi:10.1007/s10551-011-0825-x

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…One possible explanation for finding a connection between humility and leader effectiveness is this: Humility appears to be necessary for leader integrity and for building trust with followers-both of which are key ingredients to successful leadership (Brown & Trevino, 2006;Kouzes & Posner, 2002;Sankar, 2003). Because humility is characterized by honesty (Lee & Ashton, 2004) and is necessary for ethical leadership (Brown & Trevino, 2006;Caldwell et al, 2011), humble leaders are likely to be perceived as credible and trustworthy. The importance of honesty, credibility, and trustworthiness of leaders can hardly be overstated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still others (Fry, 2003;Fry & Slocum, 2008;Reave, 2005) have posited a theoretical connection among humility, spiritual leadership, and leader effectiveness. Other researchers have asserted that humility is necessary for ethical leadership, which contributes to leader effectiveness (Brown & Trevino, 2006;Caldwell, Dixon, Atkins, & Dowdell, 2011;Chan, McBey, & Scott-Ladd, 2011).…”

Section: Leader Humility and Effectivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Teacher Perceptions of Principals’ Confidence, Humility, and Effectiveness

Oyer

2015

Journal of School Leadership

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Humility in leadership has received growing scholarly attention in recent years. However, the literature is devoid of empirical studies of the relationship among humility, confidence (an attribute consistently linked to effective leadership), and leader effectiveness. This quantitative study examined the understudied relationships among these three constructs. In this study, 137 teachers from K–12 educational settings completed a survey measuring teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ confidence, humility, and leader effectiveness. Results showed that humility and confidence were strongly and positively related to each other and to leader effectiveness. The findings provide support for the importance of humility and confidence as attributes of effective leadership and have potentially important implications for educational leadership.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Leader Humility and Effectivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Perceptions of Principals’ Confidence, Humility, and Effectiveness

Oyer

2015

Journal of School Leadership

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“…"Timothy"), as a model for organizations in creating a sense of "legacy," or passing down the values of leaders from one organizational generation to the next. Caldwell et al (2011) have proposed the Judeo-Christian biblical concept of "repentance" as potentially instructive for leaders and organizations in processes of continuous improvement, noting:…”

Section: Positive Dimensions Of Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership religiosity: a critical analysis

McCormack

Brinkley‐Rubinstein

Craven

2014

Leadership &Amp; Organization Development Journal

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of leadership religiosity in a local non-profit organizational setting, from a larger program evaluation project, and to problematize prevailing theoretical assumptions in the leadership religiosity literature about the nature of religion in organizational settings. Design/methodology/approach – Methods of data collection consisted primarily of in-depth interviewing, observations, and document content analysis of organizational publications, web sites, and social media. The larger program evaluation project also utilized social network analysis and surveys. Findings – The data highlights several important manifestations of leadership religiosity that serve to legitimate potentially unhealthy leadership tendencies and organizational processes: unrealistic future goals in strategic planning and dogmatic decision making. Both stem from the perceived divine origination of the organization in question, and from the perceived divine authority placed upon the leader of the organization. Practical implications – This research challenges prevailing theoretical assumptions about religion in the workplace that characterize “religion” as wholly distinct from other social, political, and organizational processes and inherently positive or beneficial. Conclusions about the potential benefits of religion for organizational life should therefore be made with caution and with a more robust and balanced understanding of the constructed nature of religion. Originality/value – This paper adds much-needed nuance to the extant literature on leadership religiosity, the vast majority of which assumes certain a priori qualities and values in religion and considers only the positive manifestations and functions of religion. While religiosity is often associated with certain organizational benefits, more robust discussion must examine the potential for religion to be manifested or used in the service of more negative or harmful purposes and ends.

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“…Ethical ideals may influence how people react to perceived injustices (Hastings and Finegan, 2011), and observers of injustice may prefer solutions that change procedures in innovative ways so as to avoid future injustices that could affect other people, preventing the harm from reoccurring, instead of short-sighted patchwork solutions (Cugueró-Escofet et al , 2014). While repairing social or moral harms may drive some companies to seek innovative improvement (Caldwell et al , 2011), quality-oriented continuous improvement initiatives also are fueling innovative corporate social responsibility actions (Zwetsloot, 2003). These efforts are combining efficiency, corporate social responsibility integration and sustainability initiatives into strategic projects that aim to develop practices for proper economic functioning that are broader than financial performance, to contribute to the quality of the company’s internal and external communities and society at large, also internationally (Zwetsloot and van Marrewijk, 2004).…”

Section: Ethical Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrepreneurs’ ingenuity and self-imposed ethical constraints: creating sustainability-oriented new ventures and knowledge

Siqueira

Honig

2019

JKM

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Purpose Ingenuity can be viewed as the use of creativity to develop innovation within constraints. The authors investigate how entrepreneurial ingenuity is enhanced by self-imposed ethical constraints, by using a case study of sustainability-driven technology enterprises in an emerging economy. The authors find that self-imposed ethical constraints can enhance entrepreneurial ingenuity because they encourage entrepreneurs to solve more complex problems as a result of considering the impact of the business on a more diverse set of stakeholders. The aim of this study is to show that while additional resources are normally considered an advantage, a dearth of resources can be a source of competitive advantage leading to ingenuity. By self-imposing ethical constraints, founders increase engagement of stakeholders who shape the firm’s industry toward greater sustainability knowledge. Design/methodology/approach The authors used semi-structured interviews which are typically the most important data source in the Gioia methodology because they provide both retrospective and present accounts by individuals experiencing the phenomenon of theoretical interest (Gioia et al., 2012). The authors focused on founders at each enterprise who had sufficient knowledge to speak comprehensively and authoritatively about their organizations. The goals of the semi-structured interview protocol were to focus on the research question, avoid the use of terminology that could lead interviewees in their answers and maintain flexibility to explore spontaneous themes during the interviews. Findings The authors examined the influence of entrepreneurial ingenuity on the creation of knowledge in an organization's environment. They defined entrepreneurial ingenuity as a type of organizational ingenuity (Lampel et al., 2014a, 2014b) and by focusing on the role of ethical constraints, examined the conditions under which it is influenced. They emphasized that ethical constraints warrant consideration in the knowledge management process (Rechberg and Syed, 2013) because they can stimulate entrepreneurial ingenuity. The authors also investigated the relevance of ethical constraints for founders of social enterprises in Brazil, an emerging economy of growing interest to knowledge management scholars. Research limitations/implications This study brings the following three main contributions. First, by incorporating the scope of social entrepreneurship, the research contributes to the perspective that both ethics and innovation can positively coexist within an organization while contributing to knowledge management creation and success (Borghini, 2005; Schumacher and Wasieleski, 2013). Second, the authors establish ethics as an important type of constraint that can spark ingenuity and help break through the constraints of bounded awareness for knowledge management (Kumar and Chakrabarti, 2012). Third, by highlighting the role of self-imposed ethical constraints, this study helps answer a recent call for research on “entrepreneurial actions that benefit others” (Shepherd, 2015, p. 490) addressing “What are the constraints that disable or obstruct an organization’s normal routines from alleviating human suffering?..It could be less about whether it is good or bad to ignore constraints and more about which constraints are ignored and which are abided by” (Shepherd, 2015, pp. 499, 501, emphasis added). Practical implications In this study, the authors show that entrepreneurs facing ethical dilemmas experience a unique cycle of equilibration, essentially throwing customary norms of equilibrium into disequilibrium. Treating ethics as both a lever and a constraint allows a more unique set of problems to be solved through knowledge management and entrepreneurship, so solutions to these problems can themselves become new sustainability-driven businesses. Social implications This study opens up several opportunities for future research. The authors conducted a study with five sustainability-driven enterprises from Brazil. New research may benefit from examining a larger number of organizations in other countries to investigate potential environmental differences that affect ingenuity and knowledge management. This study highlights the notion of ethical constraints as enabling mechanisms, and thus self-imposed ethical constraints merit a more systematic consideration as a key additional factor that may inspire disruptive innovation (Christensen, 2013), blue-ocean strategy (Kim and Mauborgne, 2004), as well as value-creation for stakeholders (Tantalo and Priem, 2016). Originality/value Resources are critical to both knowledge management and entrepreneurial activity and have been examined from numerous perspectives (Alvarez & Busenitz, 2001; Barney, Wright, & Ketchen, 2001; Moustaghfir and Schiuma, 2013). Entrepreneurs following a creation strategy depend less on accumulating existing knowledge and resources before beginning, and more on forming new knowledge or relationships that do not yet exist. They do this through a process of entrepreneurial trial and error (Alvarez & Barney, 2007, 2010). From a knowledge management perspective, individual knowledge sharing through both experimentation and learning by doing provide consistently high levels of knowledge sharing (Burns, Acar and Datta, 2011). This research emphasizes that constraints, such as limited resources and self-imposed ethical standards, can be a source of advantage leading to ingenuity and knowledge creation.

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Repentance and Continuous Improvement: Ethical Implications for the Modern Leader

Abstract: repentance, continuous improvement, transformative leadership, leadership style, ethics in leadership,

Cited by 20 publications

References 50 publications

Teacher Perceptions of Principals’ Confidence, Humility, and Effectiveness

Teacher Perceptions of Principals’ Confidence, Humility, and Effectiveness

Leadership religiosity: a critical analysis

Entrepreneurs’ ingenuity and self-imposed ethical constraints: creating sustainability-oriented new ventures and knowledge

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