Autonomous, yet Aligned: Challenges of Self-Leadership in Context

Studies of radical change pay more attention to early phases of the change processes than to later phases and implementation. Research that can contribute to a deeper understanding of factors that influence the implementation of such changes is therefore called for. The purpose of this chapter is to increase the insight and understanding of how trust and psychological safety impact implementation of radical changes. To meet this purpose, we raise the following research questions: 1) What are the differences and similarities between the concepts of trust and psychological safety? 2) How does trust and psychological safety influence implementation of radical changes in organizations? To answer the first question, we start by conducting a review of the literature on trust and psychological safety in part one. Although both concepts are widely used, the observable level of precision and understanding of the concepts varies. Our review reveals that the concepts are popular and quite closely related, yet there are also important differences worth noticing. To answer the second research question, we apply the insight from part one to discuss a conceptual case, well-known to many organizations in current business life; the implementation of radical new service technology. The discussion reveals that both trust and psychological safety play important, but somewhat different roles in top-down and bottom-up organized radical and adaptive change processes respectively.

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Hvordan påvirker tillit og psykologisk trygghet implementering av radikale endringer? En casestudie av digital tjenesteteknologi

Lange¹,

Gausdal²

2020

Selvledelse som mulighet i kunnskapsorganisasjoner: Trengs andre selvledelsesstrategier?

Drake¹

2020

Self-leadership is an increasingly current topic, not only for the sake of scholarly study and research, but not least for practical application in modern organizations. The fundamental idea of self-leadership is that employees can take on responsibility for many of the influence processes normally carried out by leaders and leadership systems. Knowledge workers is a category of employees who might be particularily in need of self-leadership, as their work is typically unstructured, cognitively taxing, and requires the right kind of mix between alone time and extensive collaboration. How to prioritize the right types of tasks, make sure to involve the right people at the right time and protect oneself from collaboration overload, generosity burnout or other types of overwork, are examples of dilemmas facing knowledge workers in their everyday working lives. Research and theoretical contributions addressing the particular concerns and needs related to knowledge workers’ self-leadership, however, are limited. In this chapter, we discuss some of the most pressing issues in relation to self-leadership by knowledge workers and present several strategies that may assist and equip them with suitable self-leadership skills and capabilities. One of the main takeouts from this review is that behavioral and structural strategies should be prioritized over cognitive ones. Moreover, senior and experienced workers should make more use of the autonomy available to them by making sure they work in a sustainable manner, as well as role-modeling such behaviors and serving as coaches and mentors for more inexperienced workers.

Gårsdagens suksess – morgendagens begrensning? Strategisk relevant handlingsrom: En rikere forståelse av leders handlingsrom

Bastesen¹,

Lange²

2020

Managerial discretion is said to be a fundamental condition for effective leadership. Studies of managerial discretion have to a large degree focused on the magnitude of managers’ discretion and how different factors influence managers’ perceived level of discretion (Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick & Finkelstein, 1987; Hutzschenreuter & Kleindienst, 2013). In this chapter, we argue that it is insufficient to study the size of managers’ room for discretion. We also need to understand the content included in leaders’ discretionary rooms. In a study of ten successful logistics companies, one of which was studied more in-depth, we find that the managers perceive their room for managerial discretion as large. However, the alternatives considered are to a large extent operational and short-term, at the expense of more long-term, strategically relevant alternatives facing future challenges. Hence, we develop the concept “strategically relevant managerial discretion”, which, in addition to the alternatives that managers are aware of and that are acceptable for the mangers’ stakeholders, also includes a new dimension: to what extent the alternatives are strategically relevant for future challenges. We conclude the chapter by pointing out interesting directions for future research, including a call for empirical studies of the conceptual model developed in this chapter.