March' 20
The Effective Executive
Focus
Since the business world functions as a global village, it does not take long for a recession to contagiously spread from its epicenter to the rest of the world. For instance, the outbreak of Corona Virus in China is severely impacting the manufacturing sector in specific and business in general in the US, India and several other countries.
The business world has witnessed enough recessions and slowdowns to conclude that the causal factors and location of a future recession may be unknown at present, but an outbreak of a recession with a definite periodicity is imminent. Business world is always vulnerable to slowdowns. Hence, it is quite pragmatic to expect leaders to be prepared to face, withstand and overcome the recessionary crisis, efficiently ensuring least damage to the organization's performance, prospects and resources.
This issue focuses on leader's readiness towards a slowdown.
The first paper, "Economic Slowdown: A Business and Social Opportunity for Responsible Leaders" by Colin Coulson-Thomas, emphasizes the role of the companies and the boards in setting a strategic direction for the organization, in the midst of possible crisis. The paper takes a balanced stand between the positive as well as negative consequences of a crisis and elaborates the responses of boards and companies towards the situation. The paper elucidates the role of boards towards reviewing corporate purpose, identifying priorities and setting direction to more sustainable business models.
The next paper, "Sustainability Leadership: Linking Theory and Practice" by Wayne Visser and Polly Courtice, aims to offer an understanding of sustainability leadership and its role in transformational change. The paper presents a model of sustainability leadership in practice, which was tested among a sample of senior business leaders. The model offers insights into sustainability leadership in three areas, viz., context, individual characteristics, and actions.
The third paper, "BRICS Workplace Comparisons: Influence of Chinese and South African Cultural Orientations" by Ying Zhou and Kurt April, emphasizes the cultural similarities and differences, characterized by context-specific beliefs and values, affecting business and human resource strategy choices. The paper is based on an empirical evidence of data from two diverse cultural contexts, viz., Zulu and Chinese, non-managerial employees, and makes an attempt to compare the cultural values of the two contexts.
The last paper, "Senior Executives @ Risk: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Success!" by Michael Walton, seeks to remind the senior executives-and other senior professionals- about some of the pitfalls they need to avoid if they are to maintain their successful career trajectory and avoid roadblocks, brick walls, psychological exhaustion and other obstacles during their professional and executive careers.
Consulting Editor
Economic Slowdown: A Business and Social Opportunity for Responsible Leaders
An economic slowdown can have positive as well as negative consequences, especially in relation to the environment, biodiversity and global warming. It creates opportunities as well as problems. The responses of boards and companies can vary. Some can be more socially and environmentally responsible than others. Boards can review corporate purpose, priorities and direction, initiate and/or accelerate transition to more sustainable operations, activities, offerings and business models, and take steps to ensure people are helped and enabled to undertake transition and transformation journeys. There are relatively quick and affordable ways of providing support that can benefit people, organizations and the environment.
Sustainability Leadership: Linking Theory and Practice
The paper aims to create a clearer understanding of the nature of sustainability leadership and how it can contribute to transformational change. It does this by locating sustainability within the leadership literature, defining the concept of sustainability leadership, and presenting a model of sustainability leadership in practice. The model was tested with a sample of senior business leaders and refined in line with their feedback. The model presents insights on sustainability leadership in three areas: context, individual characteristics, and actions. The model is illustrated using quotes from senior business leaders that are focused on sustainability in their organizations.
BRICS Workplace Comparisons: Influence of Chinese and South African Cultural Orientations
For international enterprises, the ability to adaptively manage people from different cultural backgrounds is key to their success, even their survival. In the light of China's 'Belt and Road' strategy, this paper looked specifically at the Sino-South Africa cultural similarities and differences, underpinned by context-specific beliefs and values emerging from Southern African and East Asian philosophical societal/workplace traditions. Using survey data collected from 644 Zulu and Chinese, non-managerial employees, this paper compared Ubuntu and Confucianism cultural values with reference to the six-dimensional model established by Hofstede (2011). The findings revealed that there were important differences in five out of six of Hofstede's dimensions. Compared with the Chinese group, the Zulu group displayed less 'power distance', 'collectivism', and 'femininity', and were more 'uncertainty averse', 'short-term-oriented', and 'restrained'. This paper contributes to the cross-cultural management and human resources literature by comparing two BRICS countries' societal cultures that have been neglected in research.
Senior Executives @ Risk: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Success!
Continuing success as an executive cannot be guaranteed, and this paper outlines some of the challenges and traps awaiting those in positions of organizational power and influence. At its heart, this paper is about alerting executives to counterproductive and toxic patterns of behavior that may have come to characterize them in the positions of authority-behaviors that will become self-defeating and dysfunctional and will lead to derailment and failure. The critical importance of examining executive behavior 'in context' is stressed.
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